This is the trailblazer blog for the year, 2016, a new year that preceded another year full of unprecedented events, the floods that had hit several of our areas, tumbling foreign exchange rate even when the tobacco market was open, an unjustifiably high bill for our 51st Anniversary Independence celebrations, a year which saw promises denied, spite of murderous armed robberies, a couple of fire razes of warehouses, shops, markets and flea-markets. 2015 was not all a bad year, though, we had record-breaking outstanding performance of the Malawian Queens at the world stage of netball, and their counterpart football outfit, the Flames, proved a point by bringing home a COSAFA shield. What worries us are not what has come to pass, but the level of readiness to what is to come.
The three worrisome matters, are contained in the title of this blog, the maize, malice and Malawians. I will endeavor to break down why the matters matter, and disprove the point that it is not the mere fact that they all start with 'M' that make them significant, or would it be.
On the last point, Malawians, I would like to throw the closet open, in case someday someone shall read this blog and appreciate the nature of a country, the author once lived in. Malawians have to shoulder all the blame for not living up to the expectations of engineering the nation to its former days of glory. The people's greed and need for a fast-buck has turned us into the deep abyss of thievery, an extreme act of violence against our future generations. We have become very individualistic and materialistic, forming platonic islands which we seek to entrench unspeakable wealth. We pant for the next dollar, but take no regard to legacy. We justify acts of unspeakable evils for the next dollar. It was unimaginable that Malawians had the audacity of massacring innocent lives, I mean people living with albinism, exhuming their bodies, should they fail to get hold of them, and relentlessly hacking foreigners to grab their hard-earned properties. We have over time grown into a monstrous creature that shamelessly refuses to repent. I would only shed crocodile tears for the calamities that is bouncing back on us. The national pride resides in our ability to stamp out the evils among us and stand for the common cause, the welfare of all, not specific personalities. Polar politicization has obviously handicapped our thinking in a way that we are quick to judge the wrongs of political leaders across the lane, than we are of our own. As bwande always put it, we remain amazing creatures on earth.
In conclusion, I will be tempted to include what in one instance with a good friend of mine from church concluded. Malawi does not belong to anyone but us, and we are therefore unequivocally to blame for the mess we have given it. As the year of monkeys unfolds, we better pray God forgive us for the crimes we committed one to another and seek widsom from the Most High. We need a mental revolution and ownership of the state of being. We need to emigrate a culture of legacy and possible, it may take another Ernesto Guevara's form of campaign, taking the dross away from the grey matter. We don't need a lot of foreign aid, we need a lot of foreign exchange in the form of trade! We need revolutionize thinking to unearth the massive wealth that lies underneath the ground. 'Chuma chili nthaka' means more that what we have literally thought it meant!
The three worrisome matters, are contained in the title of this blog, the maize, malice and Malawians. I will endeavor to break down why the matters matter, and disprove the point that it is not the mere fact that they all start with 'M' that make them significant, or would it be.
Maize, is the staple food of the nation, to the extent that maize is the country's food security indicator. During the growing season, 2006/07, the country's food security levels skyrocketed to 3.2 million metric tonnes, thanks to the farm input subsidy programme (FISP) that had been resisted by the donors in its maiden financial year. The country could for the first time manage to export 391,255 metric tonnes of maize, after it had exported only 1,160 metric tonnes of maize the previous year. The country was dubbed a 'food-basket' in the Southern Region of Africa, by experts from the Forum for Food Security in Southern Africa (FFSSA). However, the success story was short-lived after the programme was dogged by perennial anomalies ranging from nepotism, coupons used as vote-buying mechanisms, corruption, failure to exercise transparency in the award of contracts, and all. The governments paid little or no attention in addressing these perennial anomalies, to the extent that it became no news to catch vendors selling FISP-branded bags of fertilizers on the black market. Based on the recent reports from Consumers Association of Malawi (CAMA), the country's 10 FISP programme had consumed a mammoth MK 280 billion in budgetary allocation without a trophy to glory of. The country remains vulnerable to food insecurity, at the pity of erratic rainfall distribution which is hugely affected by the growing climate change evils, such as El-Ninos, producing floods and dry-spells. The nation has not yet found a workable solution to its long-debated food diversification programme on the ground, as masses continue to depend on maize year in, year out. The greenbelt irrigation project remains a decorated policy on paper with little replications on the ground. On a sad note, the tractors procured for the greenbelt irrigation scheme remain static at the warehouse of the country's PVHO, without any MP or lobby-groups making noises to get them moving. One can easily witness a gross posteriority not by our leaders only, but by everyone from policy-makers to the least on the ground. I will not be afraid to say that we have our priorities upside down, spending most of our energies on the call to amend 'homosexuality codes' as though it was the central feature keeping our economy jet-lagging!
Now, allow me fellow citizens to move to the next area of concern, which is malice. Malice is a term that stands for 'feeling a need to see others suffer' or a 'quality of threatening evil'. Malice is not one of the infamous terms in our national anthem, but lately, I have been contemplating that should the need to revisit it grow stronger, the term should find its way into one of the stanzas. The most malicious society would be the one with no regard to other people's welfare, especially strangers, foreigners and nationals. While other societies are as malicious as can be to foreigners, Malawian society's malice is rather awkwardly pointed inward. the trend of the political climate in Malawi. The trends of political opportunism in the appointment of Vice Presidents is one classic example, where soon after the election, a characteristic enmity emerges, the lack of succession plans in most political parties is another dominating example, in almost all political parties in the nation, failure to relinquish political powers and pointless fragmentation in parties subject to lack of unity, is a fruit of malice. The nation remains heavily populated in terms of both its citizens and political parties, the opposition political parties are horses with the same colours, without distinctive political ideologies, and the nature of malice is infectious down to the business fraternity and the common man on the ground, mimicking my last blog, 'A Country is as Good as its Leadership'.
On the last point, Malawians, I would like to throw the closet open, in case someday someone shall read this blog and appreciate the nature of a country, the author once lived in. Malawians have to shoulder all the blame for not living up to the expectations of engineering the nation to its former days of glory. The people's greed and need for a fast-buck has turned us into the deep abyss of thievery, an extreme act of violence against our future generations. We have become very individualistic and materialistic, forming platonic islands which we seek to entrench unspeakable wealth. We pant for the next dollar, but take no regard to legacy. We justify acts of unspeakable evils for the next dollar. It was unimaginable that Malawians had the audacity of massacring innocent lives, I mean people living with albinism, exhuming their bodies, should they fail to get hold of them, and relentlessly hacking foreigners to grab their hard-earned properties. We have over time grown into a monstrous creature that shamelessly refuses to repent. I would only shed crocodile tears for the calamities that is bouncing back on us. The national pride resides in our ability to stamp out the evils among us and stand for the common cause, the welfare of all, not specific personalities. Polar politicization has obviously handicapped our thinking in a way that we are quick to judge the wrongs of political leaders across the lane, than we are of our own. As bwande always put it, we remain amazing creatures on earth.
In conclusion, I will be tempted to include what in one instance with a good friend of mine from church concluded. Malawi does not belong to anyone but us, and we are therefore unequivocally to blame for the mess we have given it. As the year of monkeys unfolds, we better pray God forgive us for the crimes we committed one to another and seek widsom from the Most High. We need a mental revolution and ownership of the state of being. We need to emigrate a culture of legacy and possible, it may take another Ernesto Guevara's form of campaign, taking the dross away from the grey matter. We don't need a lot of foreign aid, we need a lot of foreign exchange in the form of trade! We need revolutionize thinking to unearth the massive wealth that lies underneath the ground. 'Chuma chili nthaka' means more that what we have literally thought it meant!
