The State of The Nation:

NASSAH: Politicians often underestimate the intelligence of the people and can lie 997 423 times without beating an eyelid

Ladies and gentlemen, political power was won in 2020 and it is clear that the singular objective of this administration is to consolidate this power at all cost. They did not win the power with the intention to lose it so decisions are being made with 2025 in mind and not for progress and national development. The fixation with 2025 will be its undoing.The unity of purpose that had the student movement, the clergy, civil society, HRDC, UTM, MCP come together to create a mass movement to demand a new beginning for Malawi quickly broke down as divisions over power and sharing the spoils of war were unleashed.

Euphoric ideals collapsed when old corruption, old nepotism, old arrogance was replaced with new nepotism, new corruption, new executive arrogance. Political lies of the old gave way to frightening fluency in twisting narratives. The past bleeds into the present. Politicians often underestimate the intelligence of the people and can lie 997 423 times without beating an eyelid. We have seen the politics of greed and deception and concocted lies before, and we had hoped that the people’s revolution of 2019-2020 would usher in a responsible and responsive government.

But we are, at best, an old body dressed in fancy new suits. It is now their time to eat, including gorging on Covid-19 funds even as people lay dying in hospital for lack of oximeters, flowmeters, oxygen cylinders and drugs. It is time for the connected few, including family and friends, to feast on taxpayers’ funds. They may have denied it to the imperialist BBC but the truth is that Violet Chakwera and her children were always going to go to have the time of their lives in London on the taxpayer’s account.

These are the same people who once so eloquently condemned the DPP’s jobs-for-friends-and-family because “it is a chance to steal from Malawians”. Wrong had now suddenly become right, because it was them doing it. But wrong is wrong, even when done by those we like and right is right, even when done by people we don’t like. What causes new leaders to fall and follow in the old, unwanted, footsteps of what they replaced is perhaps something the Department of Political Studies at Chancellor College can help us understand.

Malawi is the story of a dream. Many fought and sacrificed not for personal gain but for the dream of a country that functions for all. For leaders of integrity. For zero tolerance to corruption. For investment in health, in schools, infrastructure, in jobs for the youth and funding for them in public universities. We dream of leaders who don’t, suddenly, become wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice once they get into power but cannot explain how they have accumulated so much in so little time. We dream of leaders who will go after Sattar’s corruption with vengeance and not victimize institutions and people working to unearth the depth of Sattar’s state capture.

Malawi is the story of a nightmare. It is of betrayal by leaders who easily get high on power for power’s sake. It is of betrayal of trust and breaking of promises, big and small. The brave officer who reminded them of the promise that police officers would no longer line up the roads for hours on end before the leader’s larger-than-life convoy sweeps by was punished and made an example of. They now get angry when reminded of what they said they would do when, not too long ago, they criss-crossed the country seducing us with the promise of “servant leadership”.

They have developed calibrated amnesia and pretend not to recall what they promised when they were campaigning for “change”. They now tell us that even they may have benefitted from corruption unknowingly. For them, the narrow pursuit of power is to the exclusion of a broad, all-encompassing national agenda of cleaning up our country. They have become the rubble.

What we know is that successful countries are forged in sweat by harworking, upstanding, ethical leaders who make the difficult but necessary decisions for the nation’s well-being. These leaders have to sorround themselves with the country’s best brains and not with old friends from the church or loud critics given jobs simply to silence them. Making a successful nation takes much more than the staccato in poetic speeches and the showmanship of appearing, here and there, in borrowed military regalia and a big convoy of big black cars.

Our appetite for the big cars is unparalleled. That convoy, and the big SUVs of our ministers and heads of government departments and parastatals and for everyone else up there, including Godot, belie the fact that we are consistently in the rung of the poorest in the world. What that means is that there are few places on earth as badly managed, as underdeveloped and stunted as Malawi is. It is truly humbling and troubling that we have to compete for a place in the ten poorest countries in the word with South Sudan, for example, which is a country that has been at war since, very much, 1963.

Our problem, ladies and gentlemen, has always been leadership. We should, and must, hold the feet of those who lead us to the fire. Only then, perhaps, will we get the best out of them and the best for the country.

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