Dear judge Mbadwa,

My lord, either Nyasas are becoming more patriotic or more xenophobic if recent sentiments on foreigners and their entitlement is anything to go by.

But I can submit that it is rather the xenophobic element that is driving the narrative against the so-called foreigners and I bet we should be the last to throw stones at foreigners if we really care about our history.

A lot has been said about our colleagues from Bujumbura or Kigali and why they have suddenly become an unwanted commodity.

It is not that our friends from the Great Lakes Region are usurping business opportunities meant for local Nyasas but rather Nyasas with their entrenched ‘pull them down’ syndrome, cannot work together to create wealth in the manner those ‘obwera’, do.

Just like their overseers, the politicians, Nyasas want to get rich quicker without working for it.

In fact, the noble business climate was polluted and distorted b y p o l i t i c i a n s w h o corruptly got money or awarded themselves contracts. When such people invested their tainted money into some business, they created a false sense of reality that anyone can get rich quick as long as they have capital.

How politicians have made the nation lazy with their thievery is stuff of legend. Oh, boy, how everyone envies them!

Ta l e s h a v e b e e n told, too, how Nyasa businesspeople operate in comparison to the foreigners. Nyasas think that return on investment is made on a silver platter and they don’t care about prudent business ethics.

Nyasas open their business at 9am close for lunch at noon and open again at 2pm only to close three or four hours later, yet our friends we love to hate are the first to open their shops at about 5am and close late at night.

My lord, foreigners do not spend the money they make on a chain of concubines nor do they transform themselves into modern day Father Christmases like Nyasas, throwing money anyhow to girlfriends or other people’s wives as soon as they make some cash.

Our foreigners, my lord, including those we call Nyasas of Asians of Origin, have been victims of their own success.

And when you have a political establishment that is failing to create opportunities for its own people, it jumps into the bandwagon of infantile thinking that calls everything foreign evil. They are deluded that acting on such immigrants would endear them to the citizens they lied to, for instance, about a million jobs and other promises.

You don’t need to be a scholar to know how immigrants contribute to the development of national economies. My lord, it is sad to learn that Nyasas, whose uncles and grandpas spent decades in Salisbury, Rhodesia and Sud Afrique, now loathe immigrants who are making an honest living.

My lord, I actual ly laughed my lungs out when I heard a senior civil servant passionately claiming that our land is not for sale to foreigners. Fair enough! But when it comes to attracting investors, which serious investor would be attracted to a country that limits them as such?

By the way, my lord, do the citizens know that through the spirit of regional integration, the continent is gradually os c i l l a t ing towards embracing our diversities such that xenophobic attitudes are antithetical to it?

My l o r d , l e t t h e establishment create opportunities for its people and stop blaming everything on the unfortunate immigrant. If the fuel scarcity and forex shortage or the high cost of living was caused by the immigrants, life would have been bearable now that you have shut the majority of them into that hitherto notorious prison in Dowa.

I thought I could pump sense into someone’s head, my lord,

Regards,

John Citizen.

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