A Country is as Good as its Leadership

Behaviour has in a long run been linked to one’s upbringing. This assertion has surprisingly not developed keen interest in research to identify whether behaviour and upbringing pose an intricate cause-effect relationship, probably since it is obvious that one’s upbringing contributes explicably to one’s character. But wait a minute, this could be a hasty generalization fallacy, as some have been reported to demonstrate changed behaviour out of exposure rather than upbringing. May be the affinity to one’s upbringing would overwrite peer pressure to change one’s behaviour. We all appreciate the fact that one’s upbringing is a subject of parental control and it is therefore inevitable to conclude that ‘a house is as good as its leaders’. Leaving the debate of nurture versus nature to the sociological discourse, I am compelled to discuss the ‘fact’ that a country is as good as its leadership. I would rather reluctantly endorse it as a fact, in the historical and political landscape’s sense and not in scientific sense.

Africa is one such continent that showcases the ‘truth’ about this assertion. Statistically speaking Africa has been the hub of all kinds of development and natural resources. The African continent is renowned for its natural deposits. According to the African Natural Resource Centre (2015) the continent account for 30% of the world’s minerals and about 10% and 8% of oil and gas resources respectively. Following this truth, Africa has the second largest tropical forest in the world. The continent has vast fishing resources added to the above, with the largest lake in the world, Lake Victoria generating over $600 million every year. According to the National Geographic the continent produced over 483 tons of gold in 2008, accounting to 22% of the world gold production. There is a lot of wealth this continent has comparative to other continents such as Europe and South America. Realistically, the continent has faced a couple of setbacks, citing colonialism and slavery, which have robbed it of ‘part of its’ potential for world dominance in development. I wish to state that this robbed the continent ‘a part’ not all, sadly the continent continues to lag behind in terms of economic development. The largest number of countries that lag behind UNDP human development index and World Bank world development index come from Africa.

Slavery and Colonialism truly are partially to blame but the African continent is dogged by leadership with nothing to showcase but poor governance, corruption and cronyism. The continent has seen the richest presidents in the world to say the least. According to Ibrahim Index, 21 out of 54 countries in the continent have deteriorated in terms of governance, which includes Malawi. The truth is a country is as good as its leadership. Where leadership fails, the country also fails. Now this takes me to the very subject of our discussion, and I will focus on my country Malawi.

The nation is salvaged by reports on failure to follow the agreed budgetary lines for the country to be a recipient of the Extension Credit Facility (ECF) from IMF. These reports also come in the light of the understanding of the rationale behind a number of cuts outlined in the new public reforms in social service delivery in the sectors of education, agriculture, health and social welfare, subject to the limited resources. All these developments spell doom to the plight of the nationals in the nation which is on its economic bedrock and approaching the looming epicentre of food shortage. These developments beg the following questions: Does the Malawi government consider good governance as a priority? Does the leadership of the nation share the economic hardship of its citizens? Is the fight against corruption a rhetoric PR gimmick or is it a cause to be achieved? Is this the outlined agenda of the current DPP government for national development? How should the government promote its development agenda in the face of the challenges it is facing? The country’s performance is accredited to its leadership, whether good performance or poor performance. The country requires a change of thinking, a revolutionary development agenda, and a divorce-filing from its old politics. Someone once said, you cannot continue doing the things the same way and expect different results. I would like to pinpoint the kind of leadership that is needful for the country to forge forward.

1. Selfless Leadership

A selfless leadership is the leadership that aspires the best in others before aspiring the best in itself. Doug Dickerson comments the following on selfless leadership: ‘the emergence of selfless leadership begins with this fundamental principle: until you empower your people, [you are only a spectator]. When they are empowered, they can produce, achieve and succeed’. John Maxwell, another renowned leadership scholar once stated of the difficulty it is of finding common ground with others if the only person focused on is oneself. The disaster that the African continent has faced, creating more casualties that war, and famine combined, in fact it is the derivative of the two, is selfish, self-centred leadership and governance. African leaders have amassed themselves wealth with a proportionate percentage of their countries’ GDPs. The desire to lead should be the desire to take ‘a people’ or ‘a nation’ from one place to another place. If there is not consideration for promoting, uplifting, or progressing from one level to the next level, the activity of leadership throws into pieces the very concept of leadership.

2. Visionary Leadership

Africa continent remains where it is for lack of vision and visionary leadership. In fact, the continent is a recipient to imported strategic visions in exchange for aid. The Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) have only worked retrogressively to the developmental interests of the continent, one would put it. But besides the fact that SAPs and other global strategies do not reflect African interests, one wonders why domestic policies and strategies have not created opening for wealth and job creation in Malawi. As I was writing this article, news had started circulating that the Ministry of Health will not afford to employ 51 medical doctors for lack of financial resources. The country is lagging behind in terms of provision of medical services, with intermittent medical supply shortages and technical expertise. The last thing the nation would do is to frustrate the very efforts it is creating by denying to accord employment opportunities to the already trained medical doctors. The country’s strategic vision is seen off-track dogged by the rampant and unchecked corrupt practices. As a nation, we need a clear strategy that will have allocated resources, to say the least. The last corruption scandal has taken a snail’s pace, with only four court cases reaching their conclusion, owing to the missing case files, and minimal funding to the anti-graft bodies such as Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Judiciary System. There is surely a high tower responsibility to the current government to put bolts and nuts together to make a sound impression to the donor community of its commitment to fighting corruption. It is not a responsibility to the faint-hearted. Resources that have been used for catering the bloated entourage should have been saved for other rather prudent purposes. The nation needs vision and strategy which will definitely shake the dogmatic quest for self-aggrandizement and encourage economic patriotism.

3. Progressive leadership

We need a progressive leadership, a leadership that is styled in self-belief and over-reliance on self-potential for development. Malawi needs progressive mindedness. Country needs a developmental statesmanship with a view for the generations to come. We all read history about Joseph Stalin’s five year plans, which much as he was a dictator, and I don’t commend him for that, he readied his country for the second world war, both in terms of machinery, weaponry and manpower. This country needs to apply the theory of developmental state which according to many scholars such as Joseph Stiglitz, and Adrian Leftwich, is a state that benefits from the combination of private business advancements with a sizable state control which interface in a mutually beneficial pattern. It is a terms, judging from the one who coined it, Chalmers Johnson, in his book, MITI and the Japanese Miracle, ‘a shorthand for the seamless web of political, bureaucratic, and moneyed influences that structures economic life in capitalist Northeast Asia’. In fact, being a developmental state, is the only survivor jacket in the current global 'economic free-fall' that has an impeccable guarantee of a safe landing. The country requires concerting its energies on sacrificial approaches to making Malawi graduate from being a primary producer into an industrialized secondary producer, and this can only be done through progressive leadership. So far, I remain unconvinced on whether we are on track with this goal.

Lastly, the nation remains on its economic sickbed and it frustrates the heart that strategies on paper remain on paper, probably until a wake-up call hits us and shake us a little bit from our economic dogmatic slumber. We need better leadership to steer this nation towards unexplored waters, and the current leadership has an uphill task to demonstrate this leadership, or sooner or later the nation may render it expendable. 

Being effective in our trade is something with less rhetoric conquest but more undeniable action

Muhammad Ali remains one of the greatest boxers to ever grace the boxing ring. He once was quoted as saying: “I hated every minute I was training, but I said: ‘Dont quit, suffer now and live the rest of your life as champion’”. He surely has lived as champion, honoured by the whole boxing fraternity. He has been every effective. The very definition of effectiveness creates a contestation. Some regard it as the measure of output regardless of the quantity of input, while others view it as capacity to produce the intended results. In all sense of the contestation, effectiveness has more to do with the outcome than the defence of it. The only measure we have to the government is not how defensively articulate it has been to its critics, but how it has delivered. 

The previous governments have been obsessively recruiting spin-doctors and media experts to cover up their mediocrity. Once the government starts hunting around for the scribes, the intellectual mass, and completely ignores and suppresses public opinion and advice, know that the writing is on the wall, we will have another mediocre government. Recent developments in Malawi, have prompted me to pick up a pen and write. The first is the killings of our friends with albinism, the second is the introduction of user fees in our public hospitals, and the third is the rumour of the appointment of a second vice president.

To begin with, the killing of our brothers and sisters born with albinism. I have been shocked at how merciless we are as a society to the plight of other people. It is bizarre that poverty can throw us to the level of dogs, who could munch on another dead dog. Two things that come to my mind is that there is no way, such merciless killings would get to this extent if the communities and government had relentlessly resisted and tackled it. The second is that the attitude of pointing fingers in this era, should be replace with an attitude of doing something about it. I will propose that the community, the police and the government do something to tract down these killers. But killing a killer is not solving the crime in this situation. We need to capture the whole syndicate. This is a network of buyers of human parts and the whole supply chain. I am of the opinion that there are some greedy, evil tycoons, financing the whole saga, and these could be within and without our boundaries. It is our responsibility as a community to supply the information to the law enforcers on these things and the law enforcers act. Where the law enforcers, Police, do not seem to be acting, then we have a very serious problem. What we need is not rhetoric what we need is action. We need to be implementing what we devise.

On the second matter of introduction of user fees in our public hospitals, I believe it is a very inhuman idea that will not improve the conditions of our country but severe it, to say the least. The Ministry of Health, should consult the National Statistical Office (NSO) first before launching the policy. The sad reality gripping our fellow Malawians and rural populations, is that they have to be cushioned, most of them can barely afford a packet of sugar. It is believed that the recent findings from the World Bank, was based on the GDP per capita, where Malawi has or had a GDP per capita of 262 US dollars. Any person who would wish to divide that GDP per capita to the number of days in a year will reach at a nerve-wrecking figure of less than a dollar a day. Truth be told on average most Malawians are living on a less than a dollar a day. The conditions in the rural areas are dire, the fact that they have just been recently hit by the natural disaster, makes them more vulnerable and poorer than before. So the government should devise another means of cushioning these rural masses, especially where the tax regime is already hitting them even harder, where the plight of their livelihood solely depends on rain-fed agriculture, where the state of hospital infrastructure is close to oblivion, where the availability of medication is not guaranteed, where the condition of roads are very bad, the distance to and from the hospital, general hospital, or even a health facility is appallingly long, and much more, where most of the sick have to walk these long  distances, and support other areas of their livelihood. Introducing a fee of MK1,500 for every sick accessing medical services at the health centre, hospital and other clinics, is as good as nipping the majority poor Malawians off the bud. I believe heads can bang at the capital hill on alternative measures to meet their medical requirements.

On the recent reports of the suggested appointment of a second vice president, I want to have myself believe that it is a mere rumour. It is an obvious means of draining the resources from an already economically weakened government. The political and economic repercussions of such a decision are unfathomable. We need to carefully place the country on an economic footing that will enable it flourish, instead of working on means of appeasing other political echelons.

In conclusion, the practice of mere talking has not throughout history yielded results beyond those who walked the talk. An example is given of a former Iraq Minister of Information during the 2003 Iraq Invasion, that he talked a lot on Iraq winning the war, when in fact they were losing it. The government must walk the talk in some of these things to improve our societies. Servant leadership is one concept that needs walking the talking. Good governance, improved security, and accessible health services and other social services are its close cousins, for effective government performance. They are hard to implement and painful at times, but the end result is a prosperous, better Malawi!

Ministerial Impunity needs serious redress!

When the Democratic Progressive Party launched their second coming into government, the inaugural speech contained the statement of promise for appointments and performance assessment based on merit. The State President made a vivid and audible proclamation that he shall not favour or support any individual on other grounds apart from merit and professionalism. The speech proceeded to state that the president shall fire any minister who has failed to perform and replace him/her with one who is ready to perform. This sentiment was welcomed by an applause of hope and aspiration. Malawi is a country that has been at the tail in development progress subject to its nepotistic and patrimonial tendencies. We have had sour grapes to reminisce in the name of non-performing appointees cushioned by the higher authority. In this blog, I will try to recall these ministers with impunity, who relished the higher authority and sustained their stay. I will also state on the current status and conclude on whether we are making progress or not.

During the UDF era, we had a couple of non-performing ministers with impunity. Whose mediocrity was outstanding and outrageous, yet had signed a more permanent contract agreement, as it sounds to me. The most notable was the late Honourable Dumbo Lemani, who had the longest stay without a trophy to glory of except personal wealth. Many were taunted and even other physically assaulted but his stay in the ministering positions was something we all could nominate to be one of the seven wonders of surprises in the world. The second of his nature was Honourable Lilian Patel who similarly served in different portfolios as a minister, and was renowned to have lambasted the Danish ambassador that he did not matter and he should not have any statement in Malawian affairs or he can pack up and go, reminiscent of the ‘persona non grata’ incident that occurred in 2009, yet she was only a minister.  The era had lots of handclappers, bootlickers, name-praisers, and very incompetent ministers serving and running the affairs of our country. The Honourable George Mtafu had his show and several other ministers took changes on the ministerial stage. The minister had his craziest moments in the parliament, even when he adamantly jested the then Speaker, Rodwell Munyenyembe, with the statement: ‘You must be stupid’! The aftermaths of which, fate knows best what caused it, but characteristic of national tragedy, yet never drilled some sense in the ‘sane but crazy’ minister.

During the DPP era, the tendency survived, subject to the fact that most ministers that had been in UDF were resurfacing in DPP. The many ministers had practically crossed the floor after unilaterally declaring themselves to belong to the ruling party. The ministerial impunity continued. We had ministers had not performed but still maintained their portfolios or were simply switched from one ministerial position to the next. We saw an exchange of brawls between ministers in parliament and a number of other uncharacteristic events in the era. The public had another episode of ministerial swordplay and caricature. The stage had slightly changed as we noted that then president demonstrated cautioned at some intervals and he was undetermined in his next course of action. But it remained to be seen if ministerial impunity and failure to address the most critical angles of our development were defiantly visible.

During the PP era the same legacy remained unabated. We seem to be making two steps forward and five steps backwards. The plausible direction we need to take is the direction where our ministers are going to be assessed on performance basis and performance ratings will determine their stay as ministers. Of late, we have seen worrisome of some ministerial performance, notably that of the Former Minister of Internal Affairs, Honourable Uladi Mussa, ‘Change Golo’ as he was famously called. The minster gave a joke of our lifetime when he stated through the media houses that he was willing to talk to those who had security concerns through his number, thereby providing the number to the public. The minister remain defiant that the nation was facing security crisis when when countless evidence were on display through the same media. It was to my surprise that the minister had stay longer than we expected. I would do myself a disfavour, if I do not talk about the former Minister of Finance, Honourable Ken Lipenga, who had to become a silent lamb for the sins of ministerial impunity at a later stage. Parliamentary hansards had recorded him to have lied to the nation to sugarcoat the Zero-deficit budget in 2011, a year earlier, before his bet met his fate. The minister paid a heavy cost through a cabinet shuffle that followed immediately after he had become a liability to the PP government which wanted to appease the donor community. There are many ministerial stories that speak the same message of ministerial impunity.

Currently, whilst the nation is building or rebuilding its trust in the current leadership, it is imperative that leadership considers walking the talk, very very seriously. The ministerial performance assessment as has been proposed by the current Public Sector Reform project is a very welcome idea and needs to be promptly implemented. The president must set new standards of accountability, where we will not only see new policies and new conditions being formulated, but new policies and conditions been seen to be implemented. The call for a shaking to our nations is a higher toll that needs no overemphasizing. The current status of public social service requires meritorious professionals, and prudent ministers and principal secretaries. The state at which the nation is in, where we still have to secure a reliable source of financial resources, leaves no room for appeasement. The state where we need to consider vision about ambition, where personal gratification is that last matter to attend to. The nation has been on its knees economically and we need to prick ourselves in the areas, that will make us reduce on fun and stand up to the call! Then we shall be remembered. I speak in consideration of the ministry of education, where teachers have had no pay since last year, and it basically is lamentable that the situation has come to this far. We may not immediately condemn the minister responsible must be seen concerned. The Ministry of Education is the most critical ministry for development, last thing we can do as a nation is to sink down our educational standards. We need to immediately draw resources to this ministry and find out what is delaying teachers’ salaries and address it once and for all! Nobody would work without pay comfortably. We are already hit by the rising costs of living standards, even prices of basic needs are souring high on the market, and if a teacher will fail to buy a packet of sugar, how shall he or she teach about economic development.

MAY GOD CONTINUE TO BLESS OUR MOTHER LAND, MALAWI, THE ONLY COUNTRY WE HAVE!

The Vulnerability of the Nation to Natural Disasters and their Aftermaths

The country has just survived a rainstorm which lasted over four days continuously from Saturday the 10^th January to Monday the 13^th January 2015. The rains and the downpour offered a litmus test to the nation’s disaster preparedness strategy, and stretched the government disaster reduction policies to their limits. What sounded odd with the natural disaster is that failure for the meteorological department to alert the masses living in low laying areas of the pending disaster. However, as it is always too difficult to predict mother nature, especially when she is about to unleash her wrath, we would be naive to cast out blame on our poorly equipped meteorological department to do a job too difficult for them. I would like to make a post-mortem analysis of the Malawi Flood and make suggestions on how we ought to have prepared for the disaster.

Firstly, let me state the gravity of the Malawi Flood. The rains had been hitting the whole country, with the worst hit districts in the Southern Region, such as Nsanje, Chikwawa, Blantyre, Mulanje, Phalombe and Zomba. Information had started flooding the social media on the volume of catastrophes these hard-hitting never-ending downpours were having on our infrastructure. Such information could be relying on or not, as social media is capable of misleading the masses. The rains persistence and tenacity had me believe it was a hurricane, or some kind of a hurricane, which are usually called cyclones in the Southern Hemisphere. Our country has had periods of heavy downpour before and we have been able to stand resilient against such natural disasters, but this time around, mother nature had a different story. I would guess that the rains caught us napping, as the trend had been in some areas and regions. We had houses collapsing, and roads blocked by an upsurge of water from the overflow of rivers. We had incidences of heavy flooding immersing houses completely and had a incidence of gushing waters trailing down a mountain, that cause untold pain and loss in Chimwankhunda. We have had the highest number of casualties from Natural Disasters after the 1992 Phalombe disaster, with over 176 people reported dead. The loss of property is incalculable and the impact of the disaster remains vivid weeks after its occurrence. Many thousand households have been condemned to homelessness unexpectedly, and it is not an easy ordeal. Some have been hospitalised and remain in hospital at the time of the publication of this blog. May the Lord grant us His mercies especially to those sick and in deep loss of property and loved ones. The social media was for a moment awash with blame game, finger-pointing politics, finding out how the government has reacted to the situation and whether the president was committed to his people. I honestly found no reason why I should reprise my reasoning on the leaders of the day, imagining the state of the situation in my neighbourhood. I found the politics of blame-game unrewarding for the situation.

What should strike us all is the reality that the nature will remain in a state of uncertainty it is. Natural disasters of this nature have been reported hitting other countries like Indonesia, (just this very same year), India (last year in December), Pakistan (2011), United States in the state of New Orleans (Hurricane Katrina) and other countries. What I know is that such natural disasters have a tendency of catching you unaware and inflicting a lot of pain on the remnants. The questions that have to prick our minds are: How prepared are we as a nation for such natural disasters? Do we have what it takes to create temporary relief to those affected without over-relying on external humanitarian and relief aid? Are we ready to combat another plague, be it an outbreak or an earthquake and bar casualties to their minimal levels? I believe that these questions are very critical to the disaster preparedness department.

Reviewing these questions, my answer is that we are not. We do not have temporary measures to offer to those inflicted by natural disasters. I presume we need to build up our capacities to the actual levels of resilience. We seem to lack tents, choppers, an alert system for the meteorological department and adequate funding for the natural disasters in place. We need to build technical capacity to observe and estimate the nature of impact and the quantity of relief needed to mitigate the pain of loss for the victims. In Japan, a country that lies along the ‘ring of fire’ makes proper precautionary measures against natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis. They conduct seismological tests regularly to predict likelihoods of earthquakes and they alert the inhabitants of low laying areas way in advance when a tsunami of an earthquake is just about to happen. Their building structures are tried and tested for earthquakes of high magnitudes. This does not suggest that they have managed to succumb their fear of earthquakes and natural disasters, nor does it suggest that they stand on top of all kinds of natural disasters, but rather that they have the technical and resource capacity to mitigate the pain of loss in the event of any natural disaster. On the contrary, the country is still on the sickbed in terms of its social services, such as the electricity and water supply remain erratic as aftermaths of the Malawi Floods. The debris from the flood had severely damaged the turbines and almost placed the national economy at a halt. We need to wake up from this situation in terms of placing in policies that will make the country more resilient to the natural disasters, such as the floods. We need to talk more about building capacities and reinforcing our infrastructures to resist destruction that comes from these disasters. We need a careful introspection as a country to move ahead, just as we realize that we are 50 years older than when we began to rule ourselves. VIVA MALAWI! VIVA THE WARM HEART OF AFRICA!