That season of the year is here again when we ordered ourselves to do some self-introspection and give you a report on the state of our estate, your Malawi, the estate in which you wholeheartedly invested your effort to build. To be honest, we dread this season because we, the superstitious, still take seriously your threat that Sunday night at Black Box in Kabula that should we ever fail to report to you annually when you are gone ku mayiyi, as Tonga cosmology holds, you would emerge from yonder in the Nebula to wring our necks till we chocked unto death. Talking about superstitions, Moya, we have come to learn that it is not just us, the Kambwiyeyi who go about with charms in our pockets.
Recently, a member of the august House inadvertently dropped his/her charm in the precincts of Parliament. Some laughed about it but others took it seriously and defended the carrying of such charms as normal. Self-defence.
Professor at the College (now University) that Jah loved the most had to call in his sing’anga to sanitise, spiritually cleanse, the office before he could occupy it. Moya, as your uncle, Che Vakara used to say, in Unthu or uMunthu, a person is munthu because of how that person treats and approaches others and respects traditions, such as greetings, courtesies and beliefs. Any person without these traits is a mere chilengiwa, chinthu, and not munthu.
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We choose to behave as people with Unthu or uMunthu. So, Moya, we send greetings from our earthly abode to you, primo, John Chilembwe, Ngwazi Kamuzu Banda, kaNgwazi Bingu wa Mutharika, Tito Banda, Kaulanda Nkosi, Cheulekeni Mita, Grey Mang’anda, Ralph Tenthani, ada Nga Mtafu, Nomsa Mkandawire, Charles Mkula, Issac Malunga, Allan Phetembe, Chikondi Phikiso, Biyeni Saulos Klaus Chilima and dear mum. The list is growing.
Should we continue mourning? Moya, Malawi, your estate, is going through hard times, most of them man-made. The team led by Mkulukutamoyo, from Thyolo, who prefers to live in self-exile in Mangochi, won last year’s elections hands down because the previous government did not want to take advice.
They distributed money as they wished, for example. They were told that that would cause inflation. They did not care.
Today, things have gone up 300 or 500 times. Today, K5 000 is just enough to buy a kilogramme packet of sugar. Beggars don’t accept K50 notes anymore.
We don’t know, Moya, what to say to villagers in Msambandopa or Molere or Titi when they see government levies backdated from the day it came to power on every transaction you conducted with any bank or any e-money service in Malawi. Malawians see their bank accounts emptied. They do and say nothing.
But something is eating, hurting, them inside. When the uneducated refuse to keep their money in the bank because, they allege, banks are thieves who deduct money from bank accounts, who will defend the banks? Who can justify that?
Who will say saving money in a bank is keeping for the future? The Cashgate king, with his signature cheeks and haircut, was left to evaporate from Malawi and nobody bothers to look for him, anymore. Three years now, and counting.
He is a free man. That nobody mourns him is proof enough that he is alive. That’s what money can do in Malawi.
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