RSS 2.0 FeedFebruary 2012 Volume 40, Featured Articles, Guest Writer
Better Zimbabwe, not past Malawi
I n an interview with the Guardian newspaper of the UK, President Bingu wa Mutharika bullishly said Malawi would never go the route of Zimbabwe because, among other things, no country in sub-Saharan Africa is as free as Malawi, where citizens call the president names without running the risk of arrest writes Chachacha Munthali
Not sure what his comrade, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, made of it but the statement is hardly complimentary on the governance of the country. He might have fooled the British newspaper but for discerning Malawian, holding a contrary opinion and calling the president names is criminal.
In 2011, some guards in Lilongwe spent time at the leisure of the government after they said something about the sinking ship that was the Democratic Progressive Party. Similar incidents have been played out in Zimbabwe before and to suggest Malawi would never become another Zimbabwe is to suggest we are not already there, if not beyond.
Come to think of it, turning Malawi into another Zimbabwe would be a better devil than dragging the country into a new version of hated Malawi of the past.
In Malawi of the past — and we are talking of pre-1994 Malawi — we were told the country was a star economic performer but after 1994, we realised our position among the ultra poor in the world was still as it was before we started believing the propaganda of the star performer.
Years after 1994, we still have a deluded leadership of Malawi believing the country is a star performer, up there with the best and only being let down by a belligerent opposition, imperialist donors and Satan.
In pre-1994 Malawi, people fell over themselves in praise of the wise and dynamic leadership of the country. A decade and a half after that, we still have people worshiping a leadership as the most wise and dynamic. Past experience, however, tells us wise and dynamic is a careless euphemism for dictatorship.
In pre-1994, critics of the government were routinely detained without on frivolous charges, simply because they held an opinion contrary.
Fast-forward to 2011, the leadership still believes it can rule by intimidating its opponent with detentions without trial. That is exactly why Zimbabwe — and not a re-incarnation of Malawi's evil past — would be welcome any time, any day.
When people queued up during the 1993 referendum, they were not just choosing a new system of governing themselves. They chose so many things but about two decades later, some government holds the idea 63 percent of the voters made the wrong choice. No, they didn't.
In 1993, they chose to do away with the circus like the one that has followed the arrest of Ralph Kasambara, whose cardinal sin was to suggest President Bingu wa Mutharika deserves to be impeached for letting everyone down — not the so-called assault or according to the implausible version by loudmouth Patricia Kaliati, attempted sodomy.
Malawi's human right record is bad enough without burnishing its sordid resume with this notoriety.
The whole affair can only be the desperate act of an impotent regime seeking to reinvigorate itself by sodomising its critics
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