Those were the days!

Once, when Bakili Muluzi was Malawi's president, the talk around town was that he never missed a funeral, especially those of his friends.
And Muluzi had the look of someone who swam in such talk; for it made him sail directly into public favour.
And public favour, the way it is programmed, can sway an election in a politician's favour.
That reminds me. Muluzi was a politician. He, therefore, had to win votes by hook or crook.
But, then, there was something real-- something so close to the people-- about that man. The look on his face.
During funerals, Muluzi could really be said to be sad.
And the man had a penchant for remembering faces. Once Muluzi set his eye on you, he could not forget you. It was as if your face was written in his mind.
Except, of course, me!
Whatever I am today, it is because of the UDF News, which took me in as a correspondent as I cut my teeth in journalism.
Well, the pay was not good enough, but the training was worth it.
The late Elson Kasinja [may his soul rest in peace] shaped my writing. Joseph Kayira was always encouraging me. Richard Chinansi was a brother-in-arms. In Edith Malamula I found an inspired female journalist. Of course, Harriet Kachingwe was always there to typeset our work.
Then, there was Levison Lifikiro, the UDF News editor. Lifikiro once worked as one of the editors at Malawi's oldest newspaper, The Daily Times, and took me by the arm whenever I goofed.
At one point, I wrote an article in UDF News about what was public information. Former UDF director of research, Humphreys Mvula, has announced his resignation from the UDF [in this case, United Democratic Front, the party] and I put that in the newspaper.
He came to the office the moment the news was out on the streets. He was angry. He shouted. He asked for Richard Chirombo.
Fortunately, he [Mvula] did not know me in person. So, I came out of our newsroom, to the outside where Mvula was shouting and threatening. Lifikiro patted him on the back, from now and then, but Mvula could have none of it. He wanted to see and meet Richard Chirombo.
I was there, and I shook in the knees.
Well, Lifikiro saved my skin.
A week later, I met Mvula at Tambala Food Products Limited and he picked me from Ginnery Corner, where Tambala Food Products is, to Blantyre Central Business District. I even introduced myself. Mvula was in the company of Tusekere Mwanyongo.
Tell you what Mvula was smiling and we have been smiling at each other ever since.
Bygones, in Mvula's world, are bygones.
But, then...the only sad thing that ever happened to me was that Muluzi once shook everyone's hand at a public place and refused to shake mine. I do not know why!
Those were the days!

Peter Mutharika's Government Wasting Our Time

No need for an example. The statement below suffices:

For immediate release

December 16, 2016

Ministry of Information and Communication 

Technology

Private Bag 310

Capital City 

Lilongwe 3

Malawi

Tel: +265111770311

Fax: +265111774568

RESPONSE TO CHAKWERA’S “INSULT AND PROVOKE” STRATEGY

Government would like to express its disappointment in Leader of Opposition Honourable Reverend Lazarus Chakwera’s so-called “State of the Nation Address”. 

We particularly note that Hon Chakwera’s statement reflected more of his own state of mind, his ulterior motives, his political psychology and the nature of his leadership more than the state of the nation.It is a well-known fact that Chakwera does not have the legal grounds for claiming to make a “State of the Nation Address” when he is not a Head of State. 

We feel sorry that Chakwera is suffering political delusions 

of imagining that he is the one ruling this country. These political delusions are caused by the fact that he is living a myth. Chakwera has never accepted that he lost the 2014 Electionbecause he failed to put in place structures across the country.

We also know he is leading a political party that rejected 

democracy and lost the referendum call for multiparty politics in 2003. Since then, Malawi Congress Party (MCP) has never embraced democracy. As a result of their anti-democratic ideology, MCP has always rejected the will of the people and any Election results throughout 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014. 

In all these Elections, Chakwera’s party has always found an excuse to deny the outcome of the popular vote. You can safely predict that Chakwera’s party will also claim vote rigging once they lose the 2019 Election. We further understand Chakwera’s political psychology and frustration as a result of an abortive mission. We know that Chakwera conspired and colluded with Joyce Banda to frustrate the 2014 Elections. 

Joyce Banda ordered the Malawi Defence Force (who acted 

professionally and refused) to disrupt the Malawi Electoral 

Commission (MEC) tally centre; ordered the MDF (who again 

refused) to stage a coup to take her own Government; and to nullify results by reading sections of the Constitution that do not exist. Malawians will never forget those trying days.

All these abortive political shenanigans were based on the 

deal that President Arthur Peter Mutharika's election had to be 

frustrated for Chakwera to take over from Joyce Banda. 

The underhand agreement was that Chakwera was supposed to take over to protect Joyce Banda from possible Cashgate arrest as she deeply feared Peter Mutharika’s take over. 

We know that the strategy was that Joyce Banda would call for another Election in 90 days. Joyce Banda betrayed this intention herself when she tried to nullify the Election using laws that do not exist. 

Within those 90 days, MCP and People’s Party (PP) would gang up against Peter Mutharika, with Chakwera assured of the support of state resources to win the repeated vote. All this political conspiracy miserably failed. As a result, Chakwera does not believe that he is not ruling this country. His posturing himself as a head of state in his so-called “State of the Nation Address” is also coming from the same political delusion.

In his political dream, Chakwera believes that he needs to be arrested first for him to become a national President. He believes that one cannot lead Malawi without being arrested. In fact, people from inside Chakwera's camp have told us 

that his current strategy is to keep insulting and provoking the 

President so that he can fulfill his dream to be arrested by Government. 

His political dream to be arrested is a strategy to buy public sympathy and divert attention from his embattled leadership in the divided MCP. 

The writing of his infamous statement is part of 

his "Insult and Provoke Strategy". 

We would like to assure him that we are not going to arrest him simply to fulfill his political strategy. If the church housing and corruption scandals he piled up while he was President of his church should get Chakwera arrested, that will be poetic justice on a different course. 

We are happy to see him continue enjoying his democratic freedom of ranting, raving and parroting empty propaganda so that Malawians should judge his lack of political integrity and dignity. 

We are told that even some of his own MCP colleagues are totally embarrassed with him and we are pleased that Chakwera is publicly destroying himself. We totally appreciate that Chakwera deliberately agreed with his party to keep saying everything that President Mutharika is doing should be labelled "empty and failed". 

We know that in his strategy, Chakwera has chosen to be 

blind to all the efforts being pursued in this country. We are pleased to note that there are many Malawians who see the opposite. 

There are many people who appreciate that we have contained the hunger by flooding the country with maize both for the most vulnerable people and those who can buy from ADMARC; we have stabilised the economy and brought it from the ruins of Cashgate; we are building roads and running this 

Government in the absence of budgetary donor aid. Objective Malawians can distinguish our successful efforts to keep this country going from our challenges. 

But if Honourable Chakwera chooses to see emptiness in 

everything, that is his political strategy. If he cannot see development projects in his own constituency including a bitumen Kasiya road by this Government, little wonder he cannot see development anywhere. All we can say is that Malawians are wise and critical enough to judge for themselves. 

We also know that Reverend Chakwera was handpicked from the pulpit because MCP wanted a candidate with 'a godly appearance' (maonekedwe aumulungu) in order to cleanse its haunted image of 30 years of blood shedding, violence and deception. 

That is why Chakwera sidelined the old guards of the party in a desperate attempt to rebrand the party by exploiting the Malawian youths who did not see its blood-bathed political past. This strategy has failed and divided the MCP because new members are failing to work with the old supporters of the party. 

We know that Chakwera is becoming agitated with desperation as a result. 

While we understand Chakwera's desperation, we urge him to respect the Head of State. We also challenge him to rise above hate and jealous to prove to Malawians that he has any integrity of leadership. 

Respect for our Head of State is respect for our country.

MALISON NDAU MP

GOVERNMENT SPOKERPERSON &

MINISTER OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS

TECHNOLOGY

President Peter Mutharika Moving Away From Bingu's Dream

They were brothers to boot.

In fact, it was one brother, former president Bingu wa Mutharika, who plucked Peter Mutharika, Malawi's incumbent president, from the United States of America where he had been thing as professor.

And, since his introduction in 2008, President Peter Mutharika has moved on to become Malawi's president, having shrugged off Joyce Banda and her People's Party in the 2014 Tripartite Elections.

However, Peter, too willing to distance himself from the Bingu wa Mutharika who plucked him from near oblivion, has started touting things Bingu wa Mutharika took for granted.

For example, while Bingu wa Mutharika openly made fun of boreholes, saying they were not sustainable, president Peter Mutharika was on Monday all over the sky, celebrating that his government has constructed 12 boreholes under Central Region Water Board.

By all standards,  Peter was supposed to be ashamed that a whole water board has reduced itself to a borehole-driller, instead of providing safe, tapped water to people.

Peter's shift is, indeed, ambarrassing.

Bingu wa right and Peter is wrong.

FOR ZOMBA

There comes a time when, as Richard Washburn Child— former United States of America Ambassador to Italy; yes, he who wrote the foreword in Benito Mussolini’s ‘My Autobiography’— puts it, one reaches fourth to touch reality in himself, and finds that he himself has gone a little forward, isolated, determined, illusive, untouchable, just out of reach— onward!

Well, it must be that time.

One day, three years ago, I made Zomba my second home under the pinch of necessity.

But, then, the movement itself was just soup; the main dish was hope that, once I would stumble in the trenches of tertiary education, I would leave ignorance— ignorance and my own uncertainty— behind.

Well, it has happened. But it has not happened.

Why? Because where I went [Zomba]— which I thought was the future; more less like a forward movement— has only brought me back to what I left behind [in Blantyre]. That is, experience. Life’s experience.

So much so that, as I go back to Blantyre, turning my back on Zomba, I realise that the forward move I made has, through its lessons, only taken me back to ‘The behind’— the world that was supposed to remain behind. That world is not Blantyre; that world is life.

Now, I will let Benito Mussolini speak for me:

"I do not believe in the supposed influence of books. I do not believe in the influence which comes from perusing the books about the lives and characters of men.

For myself, I have had only one great teacher.

The book is life— lived.

The teacher is day-by-day experience.

The reality of experience is far more eloquent than all the theories and philosophies on all the tongues and on all the shelves.

I have never, with closed eyes, accepted the thoughts of others when they were estimating events and realities either in the normal course of things or when the situation appeared exceptional."

Now, I do not know what I am saying.

And, so, let me leave Zomba behind. To Blantyre; where I will know what to think, believe and say.

I do not know what I am saying!

FOR ZOMBA

There comes a time when, as Richard Washburn Child— former United States of America Ambassador to Italy; yes, he who wrote the foreword in Benito Mussolini’s ‘My Autobiography’— puts it, one reaches fourth to touch reality in himself, and finds that he himself has gone a little forward, isolated, determined, illusive, untouchable, just out of reach— onward!

Well, it must be that time.

One day, three years ago, I made Zomba my second home under the pinch of necessity.

But, then, the movement itself was just soup; the main dish was hope that, once I would stumble in the trenches of tertiary education, I would leave ignorance— ignorance and my own uncertainty— behind.

Well, it has happened. But it has not happened.

Why? Because where I went [Zomba]— which I thought was the future; more less like a forward movement— has only brought me back to what I left behind [in Blantyre]. That is, experience. Life’s experience.

So much so that, as I go back to Blantyre, turning my back on Zomba, I realise that the forward move I made has, through its lessons, only taken me back to ‘The behind’— the world that was supposed to remain behind. That world is not Blantyre; that world is life.

Now, I will let Benito Mussolini speak for me:

"I do not believe in the supposed influence of books. I do not believe in the influence which comes from perusing the books about the lives and characters of men.

For myself, I have had only one great teacher.

The book is life— lived.

The teacher is day-by-day experience.

The reality of experience is far more eloquent than all the theories and philosophies on all the tongues and on all the shelves.

I have never, with closed eyes, accepted the thoughts of others when they were estimating events and realities either in the normal course of things or when the situation appeared exceptional."

Now, I do not know what I am saying.

And, so, let me leave Zomba behind. To Blantyre; where I will know what to think, believe and say.

I do not know what I am saying!

FOR ZOMBA

There comes a time when, as Richard Washburn Child— former United States of America Ambassador to Italy; yes, he who wrote the foreword in Benito Mussolini’s ‘My Autobiography’— puts it, one reaches fourth to touch reality in himself, and finds that he himself has gone a little forward, isolated, determined, illusive, untouchable, just out of reach— onward!

Well, it must be that time.

One day, three years ago, I made Zomba my second home under the pinch of necessity.

But, then, the movement itself was just soup; the main dish was hope that, once I would stumble in the trenches of tertiary education, I would leave ignorance— ignorance and my own uncertainty— behind.

Well, it has happened. But it has not happened.

Why? Because where I went [Zomba]— which I thought was the future; more less like a forward movement— has only brought me back to what I left behind [in Blantyre]. That is, experience. Life’s experience.

So much so that, as I go back to Blantyre, turning my back on Zomba, I realise that the forward move I made has, through its lessons, only taken me back to ‘The behind’— the world that was supposed to remain behind. That world is not Blantyre; that world is life.

Now, I will let Benito Mussolini speak for me:

"I do not believe in the supposed influence of books. I do not believe in the influence which comes from perusing the books about the lives and characters of men.

For myself, I have had only one great teacher.

The book is life— lived.

The teacher is day-by-day experience.

The reality of experience is far more eloquent than all the theories and philosophies on all the tongues and on all the shelves.

I have never, with closed eyes, accepted the thoughts of others when they were estimating events and realities either in the normal course of things or when the situation appeared exceptional."

Now, I do not know what I am saying.

And, so, let me leave Zomba behind. To Blantyre; where I will know what to think, believe and say.

I do not know what I am saying!

FOR ZOMBA

There comes a time when, as Richard Washburn Child— former United States of America Ambassador to Italy; yes, he who wrote the foreword in Benito Mussolini’s ‘My Autobiography’— puts it, one reaches fourth to touch reality in himself, and finds that he himself has gone a little forward, isolated, determined, illusive, untouchable, just out of reach— onward!

Well, it must be that time.

One day, three years ago, I made Zomba my second home under the pinch of necessity.

But, then, the movement itself was just soup; the main dish was hope that, once I would stumble in the trenches of tertiary education, I would leave ignorance— ignorance and my own uncertainty— behind.

Well, it has happened. But it has not happened.

Why? Because where I went [Zomba]— which I thought was the future; more less like a forward movement— has only brought me back to what I left behind [in Blantyre]. That is, experience. Life’s experience.

So much so that, as I go back to Blantyre, turning my back on Zomba, I realise that the forward move I made has, through its lessons, only taken me back to ‘The behind’— the world that was supposed to remain behind. That world is not Blantyre; that world is life.

Now, I will let Benito Mussolini speak for me:

"I do not believe in the supposed influence of books. I do not believe in the influence which comes from perusing the books about the lives and characters of men.

For myself, I have had only one great teacher.

The book is life— lived.

The teacher is day-by-day experience.

The reality of experience is far more eloquent than all the theories and philosophies on all the tongues and on all the shelves.

I have never, with closed eyes, accepted the thoughts of others when they were estimating events and realities either in the normal course of things or when the situation appeared exceptional."

Now, I do not know what I am saying.

And, so, let me leave Zomba behind. To Blantyre; where I will know what to think, believe and say.

I do not know what I am saying!

Same Regional Business

In less than 12 hours, the Malawi Electoral Commission will announce the winner of the Parliamentary Election in Mchinji District, the Central Region stronghold of the opposition Malawi Congress Party.
As usual, the opposition Malawi Congress Party's candidate will emerge victor.
As usual, this will be taken as usual.
Because regionalism runs deeper than policies in Malawi's narrow-minded politics.
Maybe the next generations may change this!