By the Venomous Hope
I do not remember the last article I wrote for the venerated Richie Online but it’s probably been some eternity. While on the bench, however, I have keenly enjoyed the writings of a number of scribes, including the host, dissecting various issues of national and personal importance. I have to confess that reading them has been more fulfilling than being harangued by the blog’s proprietor for missing the deadline. Writing this week has just reminded me how rusty I have become such that it took me hours to erase images of Wakanda from my brain and come to terms with today’s agenda.
For the starters, runaway TNM Super League leaders, Nyasa Big Bullets, struggled yesterday to dismiss from, FISD Challenge Cup, Zamani FC from Lizulu, a team composed of Irish potato farmers, plumbers and world-class kabaza operators. In fact, the team who are languishing in mid-table of the 8th division’s Bembeke League replied twice past the so-called People’s Team, and could have coughed up more if the referee was not afraid of losing his dental formula from irate Nyasa fans. This would have been inconceivable to Bullets under the legendary Kinnah Phiri. His coaching skills helped Bullets to reach the last 8 of the CAF Champions League in 2004 while sweeping the domestic title 8 years in a row. The few chronicled glory days of the Flames also coincided with the prime playing days of Kinnah who, since hanging up his boots in the early 90s, still hold the record for the number of goals scored for our beloved Flames by miles. And recently, he has become a hot potato to the extent that he himself thinks he can win any constituency in Nyasaland with a landslide.
Kinnah was one of the big wigs paraded by UTM in August in their Mzuzu launch and he endorsed Vice President Saulos Chilima for the 2019 general elections in a brief speech he made that day. Nonetheless, while positioning himself for a parliamentary seat this week, he has distanced himself from the UTM, and proclaimed to being a staunch DPP member since its infancy. We cannot berate his choice for political conscience but chopping and changing is one of the symptoms for our ailing politics. We all know Chenji Golo from Salima who has reinvented himself into DPP’s vice president for the Centre. Another Lower Shire lightweight, Salim Bagus, has just left MCP for the greener pastures of DPP this week barely months after being elected into the MCP’s inner circle. It becomes prickling for any party to lose the clout of members who pull crowds in political rallies especially with the May 2019 elections fast approaching. The mass exodus of previously diehard supporters including the likes of Chilima, Patricia Kaliati, Richard Msowoya, Noel Masangwi, and Lucius Banda, among others, from both DPP and MCP cannot be understated for the mere fact that politics is a game of numbers. DPP obviously is bleeding more than the others because of the caliber of noisemakers it has lost while MCP will be reeling from the realization that it will be twice harder to convince Malawians of the evils of DPP now that UTM is also preaching the same gospel. Parties will end up hiring own Balaam’s to curse opponents before the D-day.
Talking about seers, in May 2017, Afrobarometer survey revealed that 32% of respondents will usher MCP to victory if elections were held during that period while 27% chose DPP, 11% UDF, and 9% PP. Afrobarometer is composed of some elite university professors including Edge Kanyongolo and Happy Kayuni. Just a month earlier of the release of this report, UK-based Economic Intelligence Unit prophesied that Peter Mutharika was on course to retain tenancy at Sanjika because of the ‘exceptional performance he had shown.’ And just last week, Boniface Dulani’s Institute of Public Opinion and Research (IPOR) delivered an oracle that favors Mutharika’s DPP to narrowly scrape past MCP with 27% of respondents choosing DPP while 24% opting for Chakwera. UTM polled 16% despite that it had only clocked a month by the time the survey was conducted.
The fact that no party is convincing enough to get more than 35% of the projected votes is alarming for the country with majority citizens swimming in the deep waters of poverty. It is an indication of how confused voters are especially with regard to the issues politicians present to them. The manifesto of a Malawian political party is just a carbon copy of another; you can only be convinced of the original creators if you personally benefit from such a party. It is the reason the likes of Kinnah Phiri do not find it difficult to associate themselves with the flicking candle light yesterday and trek to four maize cobs the next day. There’s no underlying ideology to distinguishing utterances of a Congress youth to innuendos of a DDP cadet. It is the reason we have countless registered political parties including my own PETRA which will resurface in January after a four and half years of hibernation. Friday Jumbe owns New Republican Party, aimanso. Perhaps we needed that 50+1 bill to have a winner guaranteed by a majority of votes and forge strong alliances, not headlines like “Cassim Chilumpha’s Assembly for Democracy and Development (ADD) negotiating a cordiale with bed-gate mastermind Khumbo Kachali’s Freedom Party. Well these two spent forces were once vice presidents, we should always remember.
And the current vice president has been omitted from the latest list of cabinet ministers in the Wednesday’s reshuffle by Mutharika. A lot of whining is already underway and every monger with access to media platform is expressing his or her views on what they’re calling ‘constitutional crisis.’ The Malawi Law Society has described the cabinet as illegal because it does not recognize the membership of the vice president while the state house is saying it does not need to mention the vice president’s membership as it is by default, as if they will invite him to any meeting. The usual loudmouths of the civil societies, however, have written the UN for it to sack Mutharika from his role as He-for-she Champion, whatever it is, because he has reduced the number of female ministers from respectable 4 to 3 in a 21-member squad of DPP loyalists. The newly refurbished Ministry of Homeland Security has also left tongues waging ranging from the new name to the characters in its office. It is now led by Nicholas Dausi, the same guy who failed to explain what 4G is while enjoying his previous job as ICT minister, and crucially he is deputized by the enigmatic Charles Mchacha. Anna Kachikho from Phalombe was sacked while UDF President who sometimes plies his political trader under the banner of Agenda for Change has retained his portfolio as the overall boss of this blog’s landlord.
Like all reshuffles nearer to elections, Mutharika is surely thinking about a winning team, and roping in Mchacha is a way of surrounding himself with the most trusted lieutenants so that he is not stubbed in the back when he looks the other way. We can only speculate as to what the combination of Dausi and Mchacha will bring to the table in regard to their control of the already corrupt Malawi Police Service. Are they going to dissuade police intimidation of supporters of other parties when the heat becomes hell fire? Let’s hope our fears are mere nightmares. All in all, the cabinet shows the president’s political homeland is insecure. The holes of his maladministration need people who can deep their hands in dirty to fix. He will need people renowned with foul mouths to exert pressure on his enemies and saintly uplift the DPP to paradise. It will be war in the run up to elections, and merely changing the name of ministry will not help its cause. What do I think of the UTM? Well just look at its leadership and what they stand for. The likes of Kaliati can join forces with the devil if their lives depend on it. As is the trend among all parties, UTM attracted a host of disgruntled politicians whose only agenda was to continue stealing from Malawians. With Chilima at the helm perhaps they have solace of preaching change but for how long? We will never run away from thieves plundering our resources.
Enjoy your weekend folks.
Friday, 9 November 2018
Friday, 2 November 2018
One on English: a Letter from the Daydreamer
Dear Richie,
I hope you are alive. Like every other Friday, I was anticipating your usual text announcing that you have published another article. Quite a feat for a medical doctor, I must say. Some of us whose bread is 'won' in related fields our pens are becoming dusty. Not that we do not have ideas to write about, but this 'bread winning' game is taking most of our precious time, leaving us completely battered that the pen is too heavy to lift. From past experience, I could tell it's either that your sorry gadget was misbehaving, or today's 'doctoring' could not let you have time to tell us one of those random thoughts playing gendaball in your mind (there is a new game in town, gendaball, invented by Malawians. I am hoping maybe this one we can be world number one, after all it's our own creation. But we'll talk about that another day).
If I didn't know you that personally, I could have thought wagoba mafulasi after getting your MSCE results. I could have understood you, most people are very frustrated right now. For the first time since I started following these things, there is no one who has scored 6 points. The examination administration gurus have told us that, in summary, this is as a result of poor performance in English.
Personally, this is no surprise to me. We keep claiming that English is not the measure of one's intelligence. Now look at the MSCE situation. No one has 6 straight points because no one scored a 1 in each and every subject including English. Those who did, the highest they got was probably a 2. At least it has shown that it is a measure of something, probably not necessarily intelligence.
For a long time, I have been observing the trends the Queen's language is going through. I suppose you have heard about, or even chanced one or two people who did not go beyond the old time's Standard 6. If you compare those people and how a Form 4 student of these days writes or speaks English, you would really appreciate how much the graph has tipped.
These days you find even a graduate who can barely speak two consecutive sentences in English without scampering for extra vocabulary. Many of us sound like that guy who calls himself Mr Broken English. I find it a lame excuse when people say English is not a measure of one's intelligence. Whether it is a measure or not, it is not reason enough to run away from learning it properly and mastering it.
In my line of duty, I often become a fly on the wall in different gatherings. Just this week I found myself in a very high profile gathering where one of the participants was also lamenting about deteriorating levels of English. This lady, a former academician herself, was challenging fellow academicians to take deliberate efforts in ensuring that the teaching and learning of English is resuscitated.
This got me thinking: who is to blame? Student? Teachers? Policy makers? I feel everyone, even myself, should take a fair share of the blame. Thanks to the world's advancement in various technologies, students these days are so obsessed with games, social networks, and such other stuff. Gone are the days when students could boast amongst themselves about how many novels they have read. These days you would rarely find students who have time for novels that are not part of their academic prescription. Students prefer to use their free time, which is usually any time they are not in class, to waste time on Facebook and Whatsapp or in various cubicles they have turned into music studios. If not, then they are in one of these shacks showing Ackila movies, treating themselves with the now popular Chichewa translated movies.
Language acquisition, my language specialists tell me, doesn’t only dependent on what you learn in class. In class we get the grammar and all that technical stuff about language, but it is through hearing and reading that we get to learn most of the vocabulary and usage. I do not think the Facebooks and Whatsapps of this day are helping matters. I mean, with the heavy usage of contractions and emojis, and of course message forwarding, we are fast losing the grammar and vocabulary. In the end we are all speaking like Mr Broken English. Even when we attempt to text in English it is so flabbergasting.
I can also blame the teachers for not being as vigilant as they need to be. There are schools that take special initiatives to promote spoken and written English. I would be mean if I can’t commend their efforts. But then there are some teachers that when you listen to them speak or read the English they have written, you wonder what kind of English would their student speak or write. You remember that letter supposedly from a headmaster of a secondary school that made rounds on various social networks? You remember that school which boasted of teaching a British syllabus yet their poster was a defilement of the language of the Britons? These are just tips of the iceberg, but some of these teachers themselves struggle to find appropriate verbs and adjectives.
And for the policy makers. I wonder which devil commands them to be changing syllabi like they are changing diapers of a baby with diarrhoea. If you have been observant enough, you’ll find that some of the elements they put into or remove from the syllabus do not deserve to be inserted or removed. Maybe am just a layman, but these other things do not require rocket science expertise to understand. Of course, I would commend them for coming up initiatives such as the National Reading Programme which seeks to promote reading culture among students.
In all this kulubwalubwa the point I am trying to make is that as we are putting more effort in other subjects, we should surely think about English. You see, Richie, from Standard 5 to whatever education level we get to, the language of instruction is English. We can’t run away from it, we are Anglophone. Our official language is said to be English (though Chichewa and Tumbuka are also mentioned sometimes). The situation is so bad that even journalists, those we thought could be custodians of proper English, are busy besmirching it on radio, television, and sometimes even in the papers. At the rate we are going, we will soon be embarrassing ourselves like that footballer on some foreign television channel several months ago. We can do better, and we surely need to do better. And maybe not too good as our dear Minister of Information whose interview he did with BBC in English had a voice over in English too!
Koma kodi ukwatira liti? Ukuwachedwetsa ana ku sukulutu! Komanso achina ABJ Junior akufunikira amnzawo oti adzicheza nawo.
Kindest regards,
The Daydreamer.
I hope you are alive. Like every other Friday, I was anticipating your usual text announcing that you have published another article. Quite a feat for a medical doctor, I must say. Some of us whose bread is 'won' in related fields our pens are becoming dusty. Not that we do not have ideas to write about, but this 'bread winning' game is taking most of our precious time, leaving us completely battered that the pen is too heavy to lift. From past experience, I could tell it's either that your sorry gadget was misbehaving, or today's 'doctoring' could not let you have time to tell us one of those random thoughts playing gendaball in your mind (there is a new game in town, gendaball, invented by Malawians. I am hoping maybe this one we can be world number one, after all it's our own creation. But we'll talk about that another day).
If I didn't know you that personally, I could have thought wagoba mafulasi after getting your MSCE results. I could have understood you, most people are very frustrated right now. For the first time since I started following these things, there is no one who has scored 6 points. The examination administration gurus have told us that, in summary, this is as a result of poor performance in English.
Personally, this is no surprise to me. We keep claiming that English is not the measure of one's intelligence. Now look at the MSCE situation. No one has 6 straight points because no one scored a 1 in each and every subject including English. Those who did, the highest they got was probably a 2. At least it has shown that it is a measure of something, probably not necessarily intelligence.
For a long time, I have been observing the trends the Queen's language is going through. I suppose you have heard about, or even chanced one or two people who did not go beyond the old time's Standard 6. If you compare those people and how a Form 4 student of these days writes or speaks English, you would really appreciate how much the graph has tipped.
These days you find even a graduate who can barely speak two consecutive sentences in English without scampering for extra vocabulary. Many of us sound like that guy who calls himself Mr Broken English. I find it a lame excuse when people say English is not a measure of one's intelligence. Whether it is a measure or not, it is not reason enough to run away from learning it properly and mastering it.
In my line of duty, I often become a fly on the wall in different gatherings. Just this week I found myself in a very high profile gathering where one of the participants was also lamenting about deteriorating levels of English. This lady, a former academician herself, was challenging fellow academicians to take deliberate efforts in ensuring that the teaching and learning of English is resuscitated.
This got me thinking: who is to blame? Student? Teachers? Policy makers? I feel everyone, even myself, should take a fair share of the blame. Thanks to the world's advancement in various technologies, students these days are so obsessed with games, social networks, and such other stuff. Gone are the days when students could boast amongst themselves about how many novels they have read. These days you would rarely find students who have time for novels that are not part of their academic prescription. Students prefer to use their free time, which is usually any time they are not in class, to waste time on Facebook and Whatsapp or in various cubicles they have turned into music studios. If not, then they are in one of these shacks showing Ackila movies, treating themselves with the now popular Chichewa translated movies.
Language acquisition, my language specialists tell me, doesn’t only dependent on what you learn in class. In class we get the grammar and all that technical stuff about language, but it is through hearing and reading that we get to learn most of the vocabulary and usage. I do not think the Facebooks and Whatsapps of this day are helping matters. I mean, with the heavy usage of contractions and emojis, and of course message forwarding, we are fast losing the grammar and vocabulary. In the end we are all speaking like Mr Broken English. Even when we attempt to text in English it is so flabbergasting.
I can also blame the teachers for not being as vigilant as they need to be. There are schools that take special initiatives to promote spoken and written English. I would be mean if I can’t commend their efforts. But then there are some teachers that when you listen to them speak or read the English they have written, you wonder what kind of English would their student speak or write. You remember that letter supposedly from a headmaster of a secondary school that made rounds on various social networks? You remember that school which boasted of teaching a British syllabus yet their poster was a defilement of the language of the Britons? These are just tips of the iceberg, but some of these teachers themselves struggle to find appropriate verbs and adjectives.
And for the policy makers. I wonder which devil commands them to be changing syllabi like they are changing diapers of a baby with diarrhoea. If you have been observant enough, you’ll find that some of the elements they put into or remove from the syllabus do not deserve to be inserted or removed. Maybe am just a layman, but these other things do not require rocket science expertise to understand. Of course, I would commend them for coming up initiatives such as the National Reading Programme which seeks to promote reading culture among students.
In all this kulubwalubwa the point I am trying to make is that as we are putting more effort in other subjects, we should surely think about English. You see, Richie, from Standard 5 to whatever education level we get to, the language of instruction is English. We can’t run away from it, we are Anglophone. Our official language is said to be English (though Chichewa and Tumbuka are also mentioned sometimes). The situation is so bad that even journalists, those we thought could be custodians of proper English, are busy besmirching it on radio, television, and sometimes even in the papers. At the rate we are going, we will soon be embarrassing ourselves like that footballer on some foreign television channel several months ago. We can do better, and we surely need to do better. And maybe not too good as our dear Minister of Information whose interview he did with BBC in English had a voice over in English too!
Koma kodi ukwatira liti? Ukuwachedwetsa ana ku sukulutu! Komanso achina ABJ Junior akufunikira amnzawo oti adzicheza nawo.
Kindest regards,
The Daydreamer.
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