State of the Nation

It is one wonderful Friday in one not-so-stable country. All in all, we at Richie Online took some time to prepare something for the readership.

State of the Nation. When I posted on my favorite app that this was going to the title for today’s title, I got a bit of a reaction considering that I had just posted a title and I was not too committed to writing. This is one of those tricky Fridays where I get to be certain that my banker friends’ accounts are heavily loaded despite the dryness in my own account. It tends to be hard to write an article after a busy workday and week on such nights for reasons that I may or may not explain in future articles.

I digressed. I was talking about the reaction I got from posting the title of this thing. The first one was some sort of disapproval from one enthusiastic who thought that writing about the court case was a better idea. This particular homo sapiens had assumed that by state of the nation I meant the not so interesting speech that Prof made somewhere today (and if you think I am the one calling it boring, a number of senior people, young and old were caught on camera sleeping through it).  Well. I will not talk about the speech because I am yet to get through it, having received the seventy page document on which it is contained. What I want to talk about is the current state of our nation, if at all we still have such a thing as Malawi.

You might remember that we had an election some time in May. To be exact, it is now 30 days; an actual month since we went to the polls. Despite still having traces of the ink from the polls on my fingernail (no one has offered to take it off), I feel like the elections dust is settling at too slow a pace. Let’s break it down.

In the months building up to the polls, the two most senior citizens of this country went to the podium started mongering some rumors of purported rigging plots. Ironically, both were challenging that they would uncover the whole thing and no one would succeed in rigging the election. While the two contenders were at it, another boldly stood on a podium challenging that its monitors would ensure that no rigging attempts would see the light of day.

When we went to the polls, we smelled trouble from as early as voting morning with one presidential candidate’s name being transferred from Lilongwe to Chizumulu Island. When the counting started and the electoral body started giving updates, the media unraveled a number of scandals that came with the polls. Mukuzidziwa inu. Then came the madando word we all love to use (someone suggested that we name the Liwonde-Mangochi road M-147 for madando 147, the number of complaints we are made to believe the electoral body received). When the results started flying in, the opposition was in the lead. A few long delay tactics, a lawsuit and hundreds of bottles of correctional fluid later, we had a winner. Habemus presidentum, the Latin would say (I think). It was not so long before the guys who had challenged that the elections would not be rigged took it to the court s and the streets with the atibera song. That whole lot of things has been very interesting to say the least and to add spice to the whole thing, the winner also mentioned that there were some irregularities in the votes in areas where he did not do well. That statement drew a whole host of reactions as everyone would expect.

In the whole fracas, I have learnt about a thing a two about this dear country of ours and I will try to break it down in a moment.

Number one. This country is just one small overpopulated village with people who can hardly think beyond tribal lines. If you followed the voting patterns, it was only one candidate who managed to amass a good number of votes from every corner of the country. The rest of the big three got most of their votes from their home boys in the regions where they came from. If you think that this is an overstatement, you might want to go back to the results of the polls as far back as in the 1994 polls. Well. Maybe just a bit back to the results of the referendum. While most of the people from the other regions accused the Lhomwe of voting for his own, it was hard to understand why people couldn’t see that the Chewa of the center had done the same. I just do not like the tribal intolerance that I see around. I was saddened when I saw someone get triggered when someone made a really funny joke about our tribe in a brilliant piece of writing on Facebook. Perhaps our tribalism is just mixed with these infantile tendencies of getting triggered by everything which has an element of the inability to take a joke.

Second thing. This country lacks the leadership it badly needs. You might think that I am talking about the President by saying that. Well. Far from it. If you are objective enough, you would understand that the president would always have people who are for him and against him. Sadly, ours has very little of quality on both extremes; he hardly has people who can challenge him from the opposing side and he hardly has people who can compensate for his weaknesses from his own camp. Let us illustrate something.

We have all seen and heard some unthinkable things from el presidente’s cronies. Perhaps those are things people do as their reward for being the benefitting “Ana Adadi”. On the other hand, when it comes to government business, one expects the leader of a nation to inspire hope and a good work ethic in his public appointments. In an analysis  of the cabinet by the NyasaTimes editorial, the analyst highlighted on how our leader failed to harness his appointing power to honor his promise of roping in development conscious individuals into his cabinet. Well. We all know why. Some people who looked at it with a tribal lens went on to highlight how there is no cabinet minister from a certain tribe. Zokhazokha timakamba zija, but I do not want to talk about the people who are in the ruling camp. Awawa mavuto awo timawadziwa kale. Perhaps I should also mention that our second in command is not being much of a star performer but we all know that so let’s not waste time.

While the runner up in the election led in petitioning the court, the other called for the resignation of the electoral body’s leader. Next thing we saw was a bunch of partisan humans marching for justice for an issue that was in court. Teargas came in and before we knew it, civil society organizations went to the streets to demonstrate calling for the resignation of the woman of the moment. The earlier mentioned leaders went on to throw their weight behind the demos, attending in person and addressing multitudes before the march. The next thing we heard was an issue of people breaking into the founder of the nation’s resting place and invading parliament premises in the capital, vandalizing and looting in Mzuzu and teargas in Blantyre. The next thing we heard was a leader of one losing party condemning the acts of violence. In my thinking, I wondered if a person who claims to know Malawians would think that such crowd-pulling protests would remain peaceful as “advertised and planned”. I joined the group of people who were left wondering as to why we saw some entente of sorts between the two big losing parties after as opposed to before the polls.

Oh! The SONA. Yes. I am told that when the leader of the nation wanted to deliver the State of the Nation Address, opposition MPs tried to pull up the EFF challenge and disturbed him bringing things to a halt for close to an hour. When he finally got the platform, el presidente went on to deliver his address calmly  but that was not before a number of parliamentarians from the opposition benches had left the chamber. Their argument? “We are here to listen pass the provisional budget but not to listen to Mutharika. We do not recognize him.” Guys are there to pass a budget that will be passing a budget that will ironically be passed by a minister appointed by a guy they do not recognize. Chonchobe. Perhaps this is the one time we need to recognize APM for being the patient leader he is, because penapake timamuenjeza.

Then there is the court case. The persistence and delay tactics are making me wonder if there is any card people are not willing to play to stay in or ascend to power. Anyway. I have been writing for too long but that is the state of your nation. I hope one day we will live in unity as one despite our tribes and political affiliation.

Have a lovely weekend. As for me, I have a wedding to prepare for.

Halfway Alarm

It is and it has been a wonderful Friday

. In this part of the world, the weather has been playing fair and so has the day overall.

If I was in my normal mode, I would have apologized for not being able to deliver a read as of last week. Since I am in the not-so-normal mode, I will just implore you to be grateful homo sapiens and to thank me for being able to as of this week. None of you asked me about it, anyway.

It is the month of June and the year is going towards the halfway mark. By a time like this last year, one misguided friend who is so fond of forwarding chain messages without any scrutiny whatsoever sent me a message telling me how it was day number 185 of the year; halfway between the start and end of the year. I am not too sure as to whether the message had a bit of blessings spoken unto me but the mathematical error that was in the message put me off. It was just over 150 days into the year but someone was overly analytical and ended up circulating the message in a rush. That is people for you. A “forward-happy” generation who act as bridges, sending every fake news and chain message they receive to the next person or group. This year has been the worst with the elections and my favorite was the message about the Electoral Commission Chair’s earrings. My fellow Malawians. Tidzitolere.

I was talking about the year coming to the halfway mark. At some point, I found myself asking my then crush about how she had done in the first half of the year and whether she felt like it was a half year well lived. Her response had me wondering as to whether I had asked the right question or gone from white list to black. In her first reaction, she ended up telling me that she didn’t really think of the half year mark as something that was a significant goal-measuring point. Goofed. After that, however, she began telling me about all she had planned and how other factors beyond her control had set her back. Voila! Nice conversation there.

Since I started listening to motivation speakers, foreign and domestic around 2011, I have always had some sort of blueprint at the beginning of the year. That blueprint comes in the form of some fancy notebook which contains my goals and exactly how I want to achieve them.  At the end of the year, there is a big chunk of unachieved goals to regret about, but one thing that I have noticed is that my efficiency has sort of improved since I started having that sort of guide. While these goals are meant to be looked at frequently as possible to keep me in the achiever’s lane, they are hardly reviewed and enforced. The quarterly and half year mark, however, offer an opportunity for doing such and checking the progress.

In the light of this year, I have hardly looked at the nitty-gritty details of my goals and plans since writing them on the 27^th of December, in the year of lost souls, 2018. The little I remember comes from the big steps that I am so desperate to take and the quest to get things whose absence in my life people remind me of. As June comes to an end, I am thinking of going on a camping trip on some mountain top to reflect on these goals and whether I have been doing things right. While I am at it, I would like to share an insight with people who would like to do the same.

When we are making our plans and setting our goals, we often find ourselves putting so much emphasis on what we are going to do and what we are going to have. More often than not, we find ourselves not paying attention to the hows of achieving our goals, but that is just one side of it. On a more interesting note, we often find ourselves thinking of what we should be doing to achieve goals ignoring what we should give up or stop doing in order to get to the place and status we desire the most.

Having recovered from a hangover on the 27^th of December in the year of lost souls, I found myself posting a WhatsApp status which I am sure half the population of Richie Online readers still keeps. On the status were three things which I was hoping to achieve in the year of Our LORD, 2019; quit alcohol, lose weight and get married. Whether I have made progress along these lines or whether those were real goals is a subject of another day but I would to illustrate the importance of considering things that you would like to give up as part of goal setting.

Getting married. I think that is where we should start from before linking to the alcohol and weight loss things. Each and every time I post about a friend getting engaged or getting married, I am faced with a heavy barrage of questions as to when (or whether) I am getting married myself. On my very birthday, one close “sister” sent me a message telling me that she would never ask me as to when I am taking my better half to the altar again, citing that she had lost hope. Not too bad for a guy you haven’t heard talking about a better half in more than two years. I understand. On the other hand, when I examine the reasons I have attained this status, it is probably because I have clung to some habits and fears that I need to give up if I am to take a step further. Better half idzapezeka, koma mochedwa. Komabe zifukwazo ndisaulule kaye.

On the issue of losing weight and the other one, I have found my love for food and bond with friends very counterproductive. Here is the thing. I made a decision that I was going to stop heavy dinners at home and that I was going to cut links with some friends in a bid to get to my goals. Close to half a year down the line, my weight is close to the same I had on January 1 despite working out because of my love for food. Perhaps if I were to give up my shopping and recipe experimenting habits, my eating would have been better and I would have been weighing less. That being said, I am hoping that the half-year time mark will sort it out.

As we start the weekend, you are reminded that we are close to getting to the halfway mark. I am pretty sure some of you were planning on finishing that house or getting that car. How is that coming up? Bought that Dubai holiday air ticket, yet?

Have a lovely weekend.