Living on dog, human, horse meat

If ever this country’s leadership has given us, plebeians, a raw deal, it can be argued that it cannot be more than these times.

Reading events of the recent few years, months, weeks and days, one can no doubt see what the late Uncle Che Vakara would emphatically call kudyekanapo agalu (feeding one another on dog meat or lies).

It would appear, from all fronts, that the general citizenry—notably tax compliant and law-obeying pipo as well as the few surviving companies of our times—has been accorded the shortest change in terms of governance and accountability.

Just look at the case study of last week. Acheemwa JB flies out with $92 000 (about K34 million) for a one-day summit. Then, she comes back with a list of undoable, impractical successes or the sort of thing a junior Cabinet ‘dog’ or VP would achieve and argues the trip was cost-effective!

Of course, discount the fact that she went out at a time there was turmoil in the country—public servants crying for better pay and working conditions, resulting in toddlers demonstrating in the streets; compounding to the general economic slowdown—then Acheemwa claims she had solved the matters and that it was a question of communicating the solution as union leaders had gone to their respective homes? My foot! For those who listened to the ‘good old lady’ say this during a news conference ‘rally’ at her Sanjika Palace in Blantyre, didn’t this also reflect the other side of a weak machinery: a system failing to timely communicate to its subjects during critical times?

Coming back to our meat, as the French would say, what language is this, a leader flying out with the little that has been gleaned for an assignment that could have been executed by a junior officer? Surely, K34 million would make a big difference to rural and urban clinics that have not had essential drugs for some time now.

It would strike a chord with a host of some public servants, notably teachers and nurses, who have been promoted or promised this and that, yet their lives continue going down the slope, if those resources were channelled towards their cause.

There is a host of public services the K34 million could have been used for and send the right message for these austerity times.

Let us put a disclaimer here: Nobody among us personally hates the President or her bloated team of cohorts. Any country always has to have a leader, ministers and MPs; and this is their time to govern. But the problem is the manner of governance that we, as Raw Stuffers, have issues with.

That is why even when the late Professor Moya was in power, when Atcheya was extravagantly lording it over us in the Capitol or when his predecessor the ‘good old man of Kasungu’ the late Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda indulged in their excesses, we, Raw Stuffers, raised a finger of protest, risking our lives or fleeing our country altogether.

The point is that as the governed, good citizens of the State or people who obey the law and pay taxes (to quote one late Alec Nyasulu, Civics for Malawi); we want a reasonable return on our investment.

But what we see is far from this simple economics, and that is why we seek effective decision-making with the few resources that this non-competitive, non-producing and net-importer country has.

Now, some ‘honourable’ legislators in the Capitol are also seeking K10 million each in fuel arrears. Are we serious as a nation? Apart from asking ourselves where that money will come from, we are also asking how effective most MPs are in their deliverables. Of course, it has also been argued that is this the right time to seek such remuneration?

In any case, the fuel ‘literage’ that our Cabinet cohorts get (1 000 litres per month for a minister, 750 for a deputy) is already an obscenity. It is this sort of mathematics that defies business reason. Even the busiest brand executive who criss-crosses the country daily would not spend that much per month.

In brief, while others out there are feeding one another horse meat, it would not be fair for us to be living on this dog meat in alternation with bunya. Time to change the actors and script through the ballot in 2014 must not be squandered anymore.