The Statue

It is yet another Richie Online Friday and once again we get to be treated to an article. There was a lot to pick from for today’s article with the whole lot of events surrounding the movement of the day and the prophetic ministries which I didn’t have a chance to talk about. And yes, there is the issue of our FC Barcelona which is in Cameroon in a bid to book a place in next year’s African Cup of Nations and the issues of football administration. There is the issue of weddings and relationships (for some reason I always have something to write about around this topic) and the chat I had with my grandmother (I will probably drop this sometimes later) earlier today. For every good reason, however, I decided to drop one about the construction project that is going on near the Queens Elizabeth Central Hospital roundabout; the statue of Mahatma Gandhi.

According to official sources, the government of India has offered us some non-conditional funding for the construction of a convention center and whatever else. The same government has seen it fit to erect a statue of Gandhi at one of the most visible places in the commercial capital of Blantyre and I am told that this has no connection to the other two construction projects I have mentioned. As it stands, construction is underway and from what I saw while passing by the place (couldn’t take a picture because my phone has no camera worth a picture for the site of the great Gandhi), the site is almost ready for the erection of the status.

While the work is in construction,  some keypad warriors have expressed their unhappiness about the project on the social media. Facebook and Whatsapp have been awash with posts of how people did not want the statue of the Gandhi in Blantyre or anywhere else in the country. Reasons? Gandhi was a racist who called Africans kaffirs. Gandhi did not contribute anything to the country and is, thus, not significant enough to have a statue erected in the country. Fair enough, right? One good friend of mine went to one of the local TV stations and openly opposed the construction on TV. Adding to that, the Instagram generation of protestors took a step further from usual Facebook complaints and wrote a petition to the government, calling for a stop to the construction of the Gandhi.

The coming of the petition brought in some mixed reactions. For the first time in my life I found myself receiving a prompt to sign the online petition from the most unlikely of friends. The debate raged on in a couple of Whatsapp forums and while some supported the petition, some felt like no one had sufficient interest to protest against the erection of the Gandhi in town. The reasoning of the latter was simple. This was an Indian statue being funded by Indian money. It was not going to disturb anyone or consume anything from a Malawian. After all, they argued, we already have a road named after the same legendary Indian whose statue we want to mount…. In the same city!
Having signed the petition, I was eager to see what the response from the responsible government arm would be. My wait for the response was not long as the Chief Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs dropped one on the eleventh of the month. Dzulo. I do remember reading the whole thing to the end and not finding any convincing counter arguments but in my recollection, there was a mention of the good bilateral relationship that is there between the government of India and that of Malawi and how India has been helping Malawi with all sorts of financial and technical support. Very good. There was also a mention of the non-conditional projects that the government of India was about to give to Malawians and how the statue was a harmless addition to the road named after Gandhi, a thing to which no one protested. Hoza Friday, Mr Secretary (this one is surely Mr Secretary, whatever his biological gender is).
Perhaps it can only be fair to give a balanced examination of the arguments or to attempt to do so. Gandhi was a racist? This has come up a lot and people have used evidence from some South African articles to demonstrate that this man supported the apartheid regime that oppressed black people while advocating for some “middle class” treatment for his fellow countrymen. And there is the issue of the K word. I am just wondering if this argument holds water in our setting considering the distance between Blantyre and Tshwane and that that sort of support for the regime may not have affected us directly. African solidarity, some may say, but come on! These are the South Africans. I would write this argument off.

On the other hand, I agree with the point that Gandhi has no significance in the country and deserves no such honor of having a statue at such a hotspot or indeed anywhere. Dzombe limenero ine sindikutenga nawo. The site at which we are having this Gandhi would surely look better with a John Chilembwe, Orton Chirwa or Kamuzu Banda statue. These ones surely contributed something to the country and they need this sort of recognition.
Talking of the good relationship between India and Malawi, I think that whole thing was said out of context. What people are questioning here was not the issue of whether we have a good relationship with the subcontinent but rather the rationale behind erecting the statue of a foreign activist on our soil. While some may argue with the fact that we made peace with the fact that a road was named after Gandhi in the city, I would take the argument as invalid considering that more than half of the Richie Online readers (and the general public really) do not know the stretch of road that was named after Gandhi. I doubt they care too. There are roads are roads after some controversial characters like Mugabe, Haile Selasie and Glyn Jones, anyway. No one cares because those ones are just some bumby stretches of road we all love to drive by. We rarely think about whose grandfather the roads were named after.

At some point, the tallest building in the city of Chicago was owned by a Japanese firm. One of the natives once pointed out that the building was an insult to the natives. That was probably a far-fetched feeling but should the Gandhi be erected, I will feel like this city has been insulted along the same lines. We have many national hills and I somehow do not get why the statue a foreign hero should find space in the heart of our city.

This is probably the most biased and subjective articles. I will give it that. If you share the view and think that I have been too polarized about this narrative, zanu zimenezo.

Let's leave the people to put up the statue. We can decide whether we will live with it after we see  it. Maybe having a Gandhi statue in town is not much of a bad idea.

Happy weekend!