Malawians are paying heavily for making
bad choices over years. There is great need for us to have an understanding of
how our choices have consequences. The unwise choices we have made are
completely derailing our best-developed goals as a country and destroying
everything about us.
This is where I have argued that it’s
not fair to expect a lot from Joyce Banda’s rule, because she is a product of bad
choices; in fact she is a bad choice herself. If there is a list of bad choices
that Bingu made in his time then the choice of Joyce Banda as running mate must
be included on it. No wonder JB herself has been telling us that she never knew and expected
that she would be picked as Bingu’s running mate in 2009. In other words, Joyce
Banda had never dreamt of becoming president of Malawi, she had never aspired
to becoming one or harboured those ambitions in her life time, hence the
excitement where ever she goes.
You will see the Obama handshake excitement and
all the noise about Bill Clinton visiting Malawi, appearing in life style
magazines, getting honorary degrees, being the first one to introduce the “kukhala
mzimayi sichifukwa” slogan, the usual “ine ndikuti”, “ine ndinapanga” “ine ndi
ine” stories.
To say the truth nobody expected to
hear her name being mention anywhere near the presidency. I was at the MEC
offices myself when the presidential candidates were presenting their
nomination papers. We were all glued to MBC radio one to hear news coming in
from Sanjika. When it was announced on radio that Bingu and Joyce Banda were riding
the open Rand Rover together from Sanjika, there was silence at MEC, I saw confused faces
around the blue family. They all knew a bad choice was made.
Facts are there for all to see. Ever
since JB became president in April last year, she has been making bad choices
all the way because she is also a bad choice and a product of a bad choice.
From the choice of her cabinet ministers to the choice of policies to
implement. Nothing seems to make sense. The only thing that makes sense is the the name President.
Joyce Banda rushed to make decisions
without calculating the costs. The recycled politicians who are only concerned
with personal gains are in charge of the country’s affairs. They messed up
Bingu’s time and now they are busy doing the same with her. All the people around
our president are flatters.
Look around and you will see our
president, If she is not being a puppet of the west then she is busy making bad
choices of becoming a facebook addict who is seen posing for facebook
everywhere she goes.
Since the attainment of democracy 20
years ago we as people of Malawi have been making bad choices as individuals or
collectively. Our leaders have invariably turned out to be more concerned with self
aggrandizement and material gain than with the development of available
national resources for the benefit of us all and these leaders were chosen by us. They have been giving us literally nothing, no mfundo no whatsoever but we ended up voting for them. We were just following their charisma.
Let me take you through the bad
choices we have made; the “lost decade” of Bakili Muluzi was a result of a bad
choice we collectively made in 1994. We chose a politician not a leader. That
is the reason why we had uncontrolled levels of corruption, we had a young
pioneer like thugs who were notoriously branded as young democrats and were all
over town causing terror. The atcheya bambo slogan, anyamata a patown, kuchitekete were enough to make us clap hands to this man.
Then came the time of Bingu from 2004.
We were so close to making probably one of the wisest decisions ever in 2009
when we gave Bingu a landslide after we got swayed with his first five years in
office. Never did we know that some bad decisions will be made along the way.
2014 is probably a litmus test for
our democracy. Malawians have a chance to voting into power leaders that mean well to our democracy or leaders that are
committed to democracy in rhetoric only.
We have tried and seen some of them.
What they have for Malawi is ng’ombe, ufa, posing for facebook, jet obsession,
Uladi Mussa, lies, elevation of chiefs, insulting and fighting dead people,
property grabbing, training our youths to be bad mouthing others, plundering
our tax money as a result of senseless traveling ndi zina zotelo at a time when Malawians
want jobs, food, decent houses, drugs at the hospital, potable water, roads, opportunities
to make money, good education ndi zina
zotelo.
