Let's Fix this Nation

by the Resident Broadcaster, Gracious Mulinga aka the Daydreamer.

This other day a year or so ago I was travelling from Limbe to Zomba. After spending almost the whole day trotting up and down the streets, The Daydreamer quietly sank into a seat, gazing out of the window occasionally. The first moments of the ride were relatively quiet, only the humming of the engine and occasional coughs. At Mbulumbuzi, the minibus picked three more people, squeezing us more on the seats.

This new cohort came in to shutter the brittle silence we were kind of enjoying in the minibus.

“So who do you think has brought this country all this mess?” asked one of the men who seemed to be in his thirties.
The other man, probably 50 or so, responded, “It’s not a matter of who has done what. The issue is what should be done to fix the wrongs.”

I realised this conversation had started long before they boarded this bus. The younger man always responded violently while the elder was cool in his answers.

The old man schooled the other how the people actively took part in the development of the nation through active participation during Kamuzu’s reign.

Obviously, both men had been there during the said time, only that one of them was probably too young to know stuff. The old man cited how youths across the country erected buildings (most of which we can still see right now) during the annual Youth Week. He said there was no way someone could be siphoning huge sums of money out of the taxpayers’ big pocket, and that we were making tangible progress. The younger man argued that it was not necessarily that the people wanted to participate in such activities. He was immediately told of the four corner stones the people were being encouraged to live by: unity, loyalty, obedience, and hard work.

They talked about many issues, but somehow I found myself siding with the older man. Not only because of his calmness which I felt indicated that he was arguing out of facts rather than emotions, but also because of the substance in his arguments. Indeed, the issue is what should be done to fix things.

Let’s fast-forward to this moment. Corruption is on the rise, and there are only verbal efforts to curb it. Just pure lip service! How can we believe that something is really being done when nets are cast where big fish do not swim? Where are we with the Cashgate cases? Just a few convictions and stalling investigations. Probably the dogs sniffed a bigger ‘untouchable’ fish they can’t manage to drag ashore. It’s only the expendables that are hung to dry while the big fish are shielded.

Fancy this, a minister is entangled in a maize scam but the powers that be are loudly silent. Whether out of coincidence or not, the said minister’s office goes up in flames and then huge sums of cash are found stashed somewhere out of the public eye. All this is too much to be called a coincidence. I personally believe this is just a tip of the iceberg. Obviously, there is much more activity going on underground. It’s just that this one has been caught, but maybe we should probe many others.

My question has always been, why is it that the president is usually silent on such issues? It had to take the revelation by the Anti-Corruption Bureau for him to act. Elsewhere in the world, when people are caught waist-deep in such scams, they step down to pave way for proper investigations which would clear their name. But here, someone was going around announcing to the world that they can’t step down because they are very innocent until we prove their guilt.

Out there, too many people are just loitering the streets in search of food, employment, and such other needs while someone spreads his bed with currencies of different nations. I remember very well how someone promised to ease unemployment once they win the elections. Here we are, three years after, the situation is still dire. Graduates have turned their precious papers into mere decorations.

They say people should take up entrepreneurship, but is the environment that conducive? In the end, many people are flocking down south to the rainbow nation in search of greener pastures. There they live under the constant fear of being hacked by xenophobic individuals.
Somebody says we are the poorest nation on earth. But as the late Bingu wa Mutharika usually said, I believe it is the people who are poor, and not the country. The people are poor because those we entrusted with the public coffers treat themselves to several Christmases a year instead of uplifting the lives of us all. Their focus is on how to get their pockets fat and their bellies big. Here we are, 53 years later with a little to show that we are indeed grown-ups.

And here we are, talking about the wrongs and who did them. Maybe it’s indeed not about who did the wrongs, but who can fix them. Who then can fix all the wrongs we have done as a nation for the past 53 years? This country’s second-in-command was in town this other day encouraging the youth to analyse events critically rather than blindly clapping hands to trivia. It indeed seems out of our idleness, we turn ourselves into bootlickers who can do anything for the sake of a temporary meagre amount of cash the politicians bribe us with to help them advance their dirty agenda.

 Even when we are in the so-called influential positions, we do not influence anything. Instead of being influential, people become the influenced. All that is done is clapping hands for the appointing powers so that we keep the job. You may agree with me here that there have been appointments we all expected would make a difference, only to be disappointed with what such people did in the end. A Ugandan comedian who trades as Teacher Mpamire once portrayed this in very simple terms. African leaders have advisers who rarely advise them. Ironically, it is the advisors who get advised. We surely need a system overhaul.

In the digital age, we are privileged with many technologies which enable us to air out our views. But then it’s all empty social network talk. We are activists online, but physically we can’t do anything. We speak strongly against the ills of the system but our courage is mere charade. Pure lip service. If only we could transform that online courage into practical courage, maybe the nation can move steps ahead.
But then, maybe this too is just one of those social network cheap talk.

So, let me conclude with a quote from one of the greatest writers this world has ever seen (at least from my point of view), Dan Brown. In his book Inferno, he wrote, “the darkest places in hell are reserved for those who keep quite in times of moral crisis.” But making noise without stepping out into reality wouldn’t mean anything.

Let’s find a way to fix this nation. Practically and not just in theory.

You can read more from the Daydreamer on this link;
www.hallucinations2010.wordpress.com