My lord, I find myself compelled to write to you today, not because I am shocked by the speed at which Mapuya is reshuffling his Cabinet, but because I am in awe of it. I understand that under our venerable Nyasaland Constitution, the President possesses the divine right to hire, fire and relocate a Minister every hour on the hour. It is a spectacular display of executive agility.
However, one must truly admire Uncle Fredo, a man who changes ministerial portfolios with the casual frequency most men reserve for changing their socks. One moment he is in Ministry A; before you can even master the pronunciation of his modus operandi, he has been shuttled to Ministry B. This cannot be a sign of instability, My lord.
On the contrary, it is a testament to Fredo’s supernatural competence. As a self-confessed mfana wochenjera kwambiri (an exceptionally clever boy), he is clearly so productive that he “fixes” an entire ministry in a single afternoon. Why leave such a genius in one place for a whole month when he could revolutionise the entire civil service by Friday?
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Imagine civil servants, inspired by such whirlwind leadership, returning to their desks to file three years’ worth of reports before lunch. And then there is Honourable Benedicto Gomo, whose visits to local councils have been nothing short of revelatory. Until Gomo took to the road, we were under the naive impression that a minister’s job involved boring things like policy formulation, resource management or strategic oversight.
How wrong we were! Thanks to him, we now know that a minister is, in practice, the Nyasaland Local Government Service Commission, its disciplinary committee and, on occasion, its chief constable. Gomo’s doctrine is simple: if a public servant is not physically present at a duty station, they must be guilty of something worse than absence; perhaps a moral failing or at least a lack of proper reverence.
Never mind that many duty stations lack decent housing; in Gomo’s world, proximity is proof of patriotism and absence is prima facie treason. Progress, we are told, allows officials to work from afar be it cities, districts, regions and the comfort of a well‑appointed guesthouse. But honourable Gomo is old school.
Anthu a Boma azioneka! But the most outstanding act, my lord, was the mass swearing ceremony. Imagine the dignity of it!
An entire room of grown, educated public servants standing up like primary school children and swearing publicly that they will not dip their hands into the coffers. It was a stroke of genius. Everyone knows that a thief’s greatest weakness is a public promise made while standing up.
Now that taxes are biting Nyasas like famished ticks, Gomo’s decision to protect the money through the medium of schoolroom theatre is exactly the kind of “outside the box” thinking we deserve. Those who complained that Gomo went too far simply don’t understand the ‘lackadaisical era’ we just escaped. The People’s Demagogic Party (PDP) has clearly learned its lesson: if you want results, you don’t need policies, you need a minister who can shout, a President who can shuffle, and a civil service that is perpetually terrified.
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