Proudly Malawian.

So many things to talk about this week. The labour export deal to South Korea, the Lake Malawi dispute between Malawi and Tanzania, the arrest of Parliament’s Chief Security Officer Officer Youngson Chilinda who pounced on my media friend Thoko Chikondi for simply doing her job as a photojournalist, Flames game against Namibia this Wednesday and plenty more stories that are making headlines.

Hope I will take time to express the whispers in my mind in a way that captures the responsiveness of those that care about what is there to care about. The weekend is gone and it's business as usual, that has been the pattern ever since. Days come and days go, life remains the same, the people remain what they are, Malawians. Why? They are from Malawi, they call it the warm heart of Africa and I have heard them declare “proudly Malawian”.

The declaration “proudly Malawian” tells me that Malawians are happy people, satisfied with what they have, what they can showcase as their gem, lifestyle, possession, heritage, means, knowledge, leaders and everything that you can think of that represents Malawi or being Malawian.

In my thoughts I see one thing that is silently standing out, the “proudly Malawian” slogan is way of saying “We are managing because this is all we can afford”. I feel this proclamation is a lazy and slur statement that keeps limiting our aptitudes. 

Yes, we can have more than this. What we have now at our disposal is a raw deal, we need a deal and it better be good.

What is there to be proud of? We have Malawi as a country and there is nothing we can do about it, this is where we belong, born and bred here but this is not what we deserve. We deserve better than this. We can have what we deserve if we work hard to give ourselves the life we want.

Take a look at the provision of social services for instance. The health care delivery system is in shambles, talking about Education, we seem to be stagnant in all aspects and it’s as if we are still experimenting on which one is the right way to go. The Education policy seems to lack proper direction, we don’t even know where we are taking tertiary education to.   

My view is that most essential sectors are dwindling and there is no effort to try and bring them back on course because those in charge have set their eyes on power nothing else. Politics is eating much of our time and the end result is that we can’t deliver anymore. Whatever they do they are doing it for votes.

Is this what we deserve? NO!

I have seen that we are a people that want change, no wonder when it comes to politics we easily turn to those that are promising us change. But what kind of change is this? We have had politicians promising us change even way before the advent of multiparty democracy.

From Kamuzu Banda, Bakili Muluzi, Bingu Wa Mutharika and now Joyce Banda they all carried the same message. All the other presidential aspirants are promising us change. And we all flock to the camp which is giving us this message of hope convincingly.

What does this mean? No matter how much change they are promising us, it’s either they are implementing it the wrong way or they are not implementing it at all.

The only route to take to be proudly Malawian for real, is for us to take up the responsibility in our hands. The responsibility of bringing the real change we need. We can’t keep leaning towards these politicians to bring this change. Of course we need sound and good leadership to guide us and put in place policies that can help boost our initiatives in bringing social and economic change. But let them lead while we implement.

No matter how much they brand projects like the much publicised one cow one project, mudzi trust, South Korea labour deal and many others, that’s not bringing change to our lives any time soon. These are just political pomposities don’t be deceived.   

The power to bring change lies in our hands and it’s in the way we make use of what we have. Those that rely on hand outs will always look up to politicians to buy them even sachets of beer and they will do anything as directed by their pay masters. The way to transformation is within reach, it’s in us, in the way we handle ourselves. Am proudly Malawian because am proud of myself first, who I am, what I can do and what I am doing that can testify even more of my being Malawian.