WE NEED RENEWD "NEW" POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN MALAWI

In the run-up to the 1999 presidential and parliamentary elections in Malawi, I had a bitter exchange of letters with Desmond Dudwa Phiri aka DD Phiri. I had just completed my second year of University then and doing some part time vacation work with the Press Corporation Health facility in Blantyre (Chichiri). What prompted me to write DD Phiri was the fact that in one of his contributions to the Nation Newspaper, he had endorsed Bakili Muluzi for President and UDF as the party that should be ushered back into power. I disagreed with him. My argument was that the UDF was failing the Malawian people as they did not seem to manage by objectives, they did not seem to have a work-plan for the nation and they did not seem to have a coherent agenda that could easily be pieced together in the policies that they were articulating and implementing. At that time, Gwanda Chakuamba and Chakufwa Chihana had teamed up – calling themselves the MCP-AFORD alliance. While they were fighting with JZU on the sidelines as he seemed to have been bypassed in the selection process of running-mate of the alliance, they seemed, to me and at that time, to present a serious agenda for the nation – may be we should actually be grateful that they never made it to power – both of them showed a serious lack of steadiness, maturity, comprehensiveness, proper judgement etc after they had lost the election and Gwanda has deepened further into very erratic political behaviour in recent times. There was another reason why I disagreed with another five years of Bakili Muluzi – the MCP-AFORD alliance presented the Malawian people with an opportunity to have two “top-flying” politicians (Gwanda and Chihana) tested at the same time and in that sense in the 2004 elections Malawians would have an opportunity to choose from the three leaders (Bakili, Gwanda and Chihana) after they all had been “tested”. It never was to come to pass.

DD Phiri, initially, reacted in the Nation Newspaper. While naming no names, he alluded to the fact that a young man, in the University of Malawi, had taken him to task for and over his endorsement of Bakili Muluzi and the UDF. His tone was not that of “appreciation” but that of dismissing “this youngman” as still very young and not knowing enough about people like Gwanda Chakuamba, Hetherwick Ntaba, Chakufwa Chihana etc. This “youngman”, this time around with a second youngman, also in the University of Malawi, featured again in DD Phiri’s column the following week – again DD’s tone sounded, at least to me, dismissive. While I seemed to enjoy the “silent” featuring in DD Phiri’s column, I was more shocked when, about six weeks or so after I had posted my letter to DD Phiri (via his Aggrey Memorial School address), a letter came through to me – behind the envelope was the school stamp of “Aggrey Memorial School” – I shuddered because it struck me, “this must be DD Phiri” and it was. All the enjoyment that I had of the silent features in his columns was gone and replaced with fear. The language was tough and intimidatory as the letter started with the words to the effect that “if your letter was written any time before Bakili Muluzi was president, you will already have lost your place at the University of Malawi and either would have become food for crocodiles or you would be on the run to somewhere unknown; so count yourself lucky that you have Bakili Muluzi as president.” This was not only shocking to me but also planted an immense amount of fear. Sooner rather than later, though, I gathered enough courage to respond – and my response was to the effect that “the beauty of democracy was that we could all express our opinions and exercise our choice – I thought I needed to counter your endorsement of Bakili Muluzi in some way as I had an opinion to express.” This one did not yield any response – neither in his column with the Nation Newspaper nor in private – till today.

My wife, then my girlfriend, Patronella Mayamiko Ziba feared for me and she always insisted on burning these letters as they may incriminate me into some politically motivated arrest. I resisted the burning. Unfortunately she got her chance when I had travelled to the UK in June 2004 and she just felt so uncomfortable keeping this big file with a lot of political correspondence with different people including the late Chakufwa Chihana. Added to her fears was the fact that I always tried to make my views known via News-talk at Capital FM and they were not views that the Government of the day would have thought were in support of their agenda for the nation – I remember in one of the shows, then manned by Benson Nkhoma-Somba that I called the UDF and its leadership “weapons of mass destruction” because they were not responsive, largely and in my view, to the needs of our people.

Close to 10 years from 1999 when I exchanged letters with DD Phiri and close to five years since there was change of government from Muluzi and the UDF – in circumstances less than democratically admirable, I still think that the people of Malawi deserve better. We need nuanced, subtle and new political consciousness.

For this to come about, we probably need to start thinking of overhauling the political arena – so that leaders start to “trust” the people as the owners of the political processes in our country, starting with and from political parties and groupings. Secondly we need to start appreciating the positive role of “consensus” around issues that matter to our people – and “consensus building”, it can be argued, is the very essence of embracing democracy. Further to this we need a youthful generation of leaders – those that can embrace Malawi as one nation without the devastating effects of “kamuzuism” because when you look around today – Bakili Muluzi quickly slipped into “kamuzuism”, Bingu has quickly slipped into “kamuzuism” – he has even accepted the title “Ngwazi”. While there is nothing much in the title itself, it has a lot of associations with the late “Lion” Ngwazi Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda and many Malawians do not have very good stories to tell about the late “Ngwazi” and we have to remember that even during the Ngwazi era, straddling over 30 years, food insecurities were a rare occurrence.

Our “prominent” political leaders, it can be argued, are all products of the same school of political thought – “kamuzuism” and that is why it can be opined, without fear of contradiction, that every one of them thinks his views should be the reigning point of view – JZU proclaims change but he can not pave way for anybody else; Bakili Muluzi has been president of Malawi for 10 years but he thinks there is nobody else who can do it other than himself – even from his own political party; Bingu wa Muntharika thinks that he does not need anybody to elect him through a convention so he can be the flag carrier of the DPP in the May 2009 Presidential election – I can go on and on here – but what we should all be able to see in all this is what Thabo Mbeki said the ANC has always resisted - “the cult of personality” as a way of running the affairs of a political agenda – except Thabo said this after succumbing to his political opponents and after there were reports of Thambo engaging in a “small” debate to allow him to stay on in power for longer than provided for by the laws of South Africa – a politically tragic end to Thabo, but he left us with a serious message that should resonate amongst all well meaning citizens of all countries, Southern Africa in particular – the “cult of personality” is not the way to go.

More and more Malawians can say it with Barack Obama, particularly young Malawians, as he says in his book entitled “the audacity of hope: thoughts on reclaiming the American Dream” (Obama 2006, pp. 362-3) that “…and in that place I think about America [Malawi] and those who built it. This nation’s founders, who somehow rose above petty ambitions and narrow calculations to imagine a nation unfurling across a continent. And those like Lincoln and King, who ultimately laid down their lives in the service of perfecting an imperfect union. And all the faceless, nameless men and women, slaves and soldiers and tailors and butchers constructing lives for themselves and their children and grandchildren, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused hand, to fill in the landscape of our collective dreams. It is that process I wish to be part of. My heart is filled with love for this country.”

ISAAC CHEKE ZIBA – MSc – Social Development & Health.
Edinburgh, United Kingdom.