Monday, December 23, 2019

A Quick Look at Malawi’s First 20 Years of The 21st Century


A Bright Mhango Special 

First things first: we should give respect to the 90’s for the foundations they laid. Kamuzu got dethroned, democracy returned and most of what will be talked about here has roots in the 90s.  Also a quick disclaimer here, I put up this piece alone, it is biased of course, if you don’t like it, fuck you. Also, I keep saying ‘20 Years’ because 2020 is already here and because 2020 will not bring drastic historical change enough to make some issues discussed here irrelevant.




An ode to the Cell phone.


At the start of the century, post office workers behaved like pretty girls among ugly ones. They had our lives by the balls. To receive money we had to get telegrams, to send messages we had to use snail mail. Not for long, when the cell phones got rooted, it revolutionized Malawi.


Everyone wanted to invest in a telephone bureau.  Oh yes, remember the telephone bureaus, then came the Nokias, my first was a 3310, then I moved to a 6600. Remember the Blackberry mania?
It may seem like an eon ago, but we have moved from Post Office to WhatsApp very fast.


Tip a hat to the FM radio


Back in the dark ages there was only MBC, Yeah, tough, I know. With the coming of FM 101 in 1998, things were headed in a different direction. Along came Capital Radio and then in 2005 Zodiak, launched by one Gospel Kazako came to take over. The last 20 years have seen radio take root among Malawians. No longer did they have to have long aerials to catch Channel Africa or BBC, the FM signal meant that the urbanites could enjoy crispy delivery.
Here we have to pause to remember the likes of Adha Mhone, Hope Chisanu, Gerald Viola, Joy Natho, Sister Fire and all that crew that made radio so dear.


Vehicle of the Century: Toyota Hiace


There are not more than 6000 minibuses in Malawi and if you are living in Mzuzu now you might actually wonder why the fuck a minibus could win this accolade, but you need to look at the bigger picture.
When the transportation industry was liberalised and pricing no longer controlled by government, there was a boom in minibus proliferation. One of the advantages of the minibus was that it was speed and convenience. It could stop anywhere and could reach places where big buses never went. Some traffic police officers should thank minibuses for the homes they live in.


ARVs – an Incredible Revolution


Malawi realised that it had HIV in 1985; I remember they told stories of it first being identified in some Miss Malawi. I remember a health worker – a Mrs. Mseteka – coming to our primary school to educate us about the disease, it was mythical back in the 90s. People said HIV patients could be noticed by looking for a coin-like imprint on their tongues and so on.

But Matenda a Boma was not here to play. Records say in the 90s up to 30 percent of pregnant women had it. It was fucking insane; they effects of that 80s-90s boom took its toll at the end of the last and the start of this century, people were dying like crazy. If you stood at Kameza or Luwinga or by Salima Road, the number of dead being ferried to their villages for burial in the 97s was fucking ridiculous. 


They even say the food crisis of 2002 was because the labour pool was hit badly by the disease. It is why ARVs deserve a place in our history. Deaths were stemmed, lives saved, and some labour returned to production. Now with almost 90% of us knowing our status and 70 percent of roughly one million infected being on ART, let us not forget where we are coming from. The stupid stigma that the disease came with and how our traditional approach and our hiding behind religion almost cost us a nation.


Honorary mention: The Polio vaccine.


When I was young most adults had significant numbers of polio victims. When I went to secondary school in 2002, I think my whole school had no one with Polio related disability.


Things we buried


Quinine, that dear and dreaded Malaria cure. The AM radio. Those outrageous FUBU type hip hop attires, Adha Muhone, Matafale, Vic Marley, Mafunyeta, Chakufwa Chihana, Matchipisa Munthali, Dr Rubadiri, Landson Mhango, Josephy Tembo, Rodwell Munyenyembe, George Mtafu to list but a few. We also cannot explain where erstwhile domestic names like Undule Mwakasungula went.


Bingu wa Mutharika – Malawian of the last 2 Decades


Bakili Muluzi was all about running his mouth; he wasted the hopeful momentum the country had after ditching Kamuzu. He could have harnessed the momentum to entrench democracy and institutions, but he didn’t. He got rich and the country got fucked. I cannot remember how many times the syllabus got changed under him, education was watered down and Malawi became more corrupt under him for sure. That is Why Bingu is important.


Don’t get too excited yet, Bingu never helped us either, in fact, fuck Bingu. May he rot in peace. He is however our man of the decade because he represented a watershed moment in many ways. He was an outside man, he spoke against corruption, and he held on to the fertilizer subsidy and actually registered some spectre of success with it.
He also took Malawi from China ROC to China PRC and was prepared to confront our colonial masters.


Mutharika however stole our money: he was a basic man before taking power and yet died with over 60 billion. His associates continue to fuck the country to date.
He also attempted to be a junior Mugabe and copied his rhetoric on gays and that did not help. Donors left us in limbo and we all remember the forex and fuel shortages and the university closures under him.


He is the man of the last two decades for not only turning us on with hope that we lost under Bakili Muluzi but also leaving us horny with his short-sightedness and a DPP party that continues to just finger us with their kletpo-nepoto-mediocratic rule.
I should have said fool of the decade, really.


Hall of Shame.


Walter Nyamilandu – For clinging on to office for so long  when the right thing to do is to stand down after failing to significantly improve Malawian soccer.

Peter Mukhito – For his zealotly, role and stand during the Academic Freedom saga.

Jane Ansah – For Not resigning when her office was called into question and still clinging onto her office even when the country burned and people died over her stay in office.


Bingu – That motherfucker

Bakili Muluzi – For his shambolic rule


Cancers


Violent Crime

We entered the new century with much euphoria – not for the people of Chiradzulu. Women and girls never dared to go out after dusk lest they get discovered dead without their breasts and vaginas.  It was scary.


When TVs and Stereos and other electronics were white elephants in Malawi, there was a string of robberies in the cities, the scary ones being those guys that came as group of 20 and smashed in doors with rocks.


Then the Albino Killings that are still on-going.  A type of racist lynching, I call it.

Under this heading, a few stand out. First is the killing of a pregnant 26yo Linda Gasa in 2010. She was killed and buried in a shallow concrete grave. Her boyfriend is still the main suspect.

Then Robert Chasowa was hacked in 2011 by alleged DPP thugs.

Then there was the killing of Issa Njauju in 2014 of an ACB employee by corrupt people?
Some of the Iconic and brutal images we have seen in the last 20 years have been courtesy of the Malawi Police Disservice.


Corruption


Here the Police led by the DPP take centre stage but the whole nation is in on it too. I can count using just my five fingers my close friends who actually went to driving school before they got their driving licenses.


Nachipanti


At the height of the first decade of the 21st Century gory and macabre murders scenes started appearing in Ndirande Blantyre, the same hysteria that gripped the women of Chiradzulu gripped Ndirande residents.  Some Jack Bandawe was named by police as principal suspect.


Albino Killings



This is its own category despite having already been discussed under violent crime because despite Malawians always having harboured superstitious attitudes towards albinos, it was only this decade that saw them being hunted, kidnapped, cut up and their bones yanked off sometimes while the victims were still alive. It is unprecedented, only Malawian women have been specifically targeted like that for their body parts.


Mulanje ‘Bloodsuckers’ Hysteria


Now, most of the people in the rural and urban areas in Malawi are - how do I say achimidzi in English? – I will go with uncivilized. That came to the fore in at the end of 2017 and into 2018 when they formed lynch mobs attacking cars and foreigners  suspecting them of being vampires and fuelling mass hysteria.


Men of God – Pentecostal Churches



The Catholics, Presbyterian and Anglicans ruled the religious scene, they rooted out ATR and planted Jesus in Malawian hearts, but like the Post Office and cell phones, they can now only watch as new age charismatic Pentecostal churches built around men explode... Ndovie, Living waters, Cavalry Family, Bushiri – I could go on and on.


If you enter Blantyre, start counting from Lunzu, there are more of these churches than schools or hospitals or schools and hospitals combined.

Many, mostly feebly educated females have sold out to this rebranded Jesus and spend hours on end praying in aggressive terms to this new Jesus. Back in the day the only annoying religious noise was the muezzin from the mosques and an occasional bell from the big chapels, these days neighbours bellowing out players all night is as common as Usipa at the market.


The Return of Traditional Healers


Another type of cancer that has made a return to Malawi are these doctors - falsely so called. Now if you open the newspaper or walk around our dirty cities there are thousands of posters on walls and poles advertising how some doctor will bring back lost love, help secure employment and even cure chronic diseases such as cancer. They are the cancer.


Police


Okay now, this is an important institution in a democracy but sadly, in Malawi the police in the last two decades have operated more like a ruling party paramilitary wing. There have been police caught using service guns to rob; the amount of police that get painted black in the Robert Chasowa murder is staggering.


The Century started with Police gunning down Fanikiso Phiri in December 2001 and in you fast-forward through the last 20 years via July 20, 2011 and up to the recent publication of a report that says police have been systematically killing suspects, you get the picture. 


Some of my least moral friends joined the police and I don’t know any other institution more corrupt in Malawi.


Their playing cuckold to the DPP government as we saw with the July 2011 demonstrations, their handling of the Academic Freedom Saga and their trigger-happy policing tactics that see them flinging teargas at anything they encounter has seen them become targets whenever Malawians are disgruntled, very few see them as neutral arbiters – very few.


The traffic police – let me not even begin to speak of those motherfuckers. I wouldn’t be surprised if they found that for every 100 Kwacha a traffic police officer has in the bank 80 Kwacha comes from being bribed.


Street Vendors


Another group of sick fucks. Yes, they are at least trying to better their lives by selling trinkets, but they are still a cancer. They make the cities look like shitholes; they engender crime and harassment and go against the law.


UDF


The initial plan was to list this as ‘Politicians’  but I was like fuck it, there have only been two parties of note in the last 20 years.  So yeah, led by Muluzi, the UDF wrestled power from MCP; they led the privatisation era and also the plunder of public coffers. Most of the UDF bigwigs resultantly got very rich.


DPP


When Bingu grabbed power from UDF he rode the anti-corruption sentiment but was soon to also lead his own crusade to implant his own mates, kinsmen and yes-men in critical positions to loot and chop public coffers as well. Most of the people in the DPP were UDF people after all, making DPP a mere UDF 2.0.


Sports Betting


I remember back in my primary school days even betting over playing cards  was done in secret, that all seems like in the past with the giant sports betting companies ruling most of the Malawian youth’s lives. If anyone who died in 2012 woke up today, he would be shocked at how sports betting has gained ground. A cancer.


Alcoholism


Now, let us not lie, there has always been alcohol among societies. It however took a different look in the last 19 years. Cheap alcohol sold in plastic sachets saw most of our youths drinking. Even after the ban, the still cheaper but larger Ice Londons are still very attractive to the youths. A cancer.


Illiteracy and cultural poverty


We have internet, we have the FM radio and Wikipedia and education at the primary level is free but when you look at the comment section of Malawians or when you listen in on public debates of snoop in on the WhatsApp groups  you can see that those Malawians online can write, but that is about it. No depth. It is worse among those Malawians offline.  Give them free internet, they will look at porn and browse about scandals, give them TV, they will watch sports and drama. Not many are into self-improvement or knowledge acquisition.


Future Issues


China


China is here, Bingu brought it here. They are here for a reason. They will be one of the most significant relationships we will have to deal with in the next 20 years and if we don’t have a policy or plan, we will follow theirs. We might not want to do that.


Population management


It is growing. Even people who need to be shot dead on sight or castrated are having babies. Most of the friends I consider dumb already have multiple babies. We will need a plan for these babies we are spewing. How to feed, house, educate and give them opportunities to earn a living. A big population is desirable, but a hungry, uneducated and unemployed one is a waste of DNA and resources.


Natural Resources Management


Yeah, the hills in Blantyre are 98% bare, we all use charcoal but no one owns a forest, the rivers and lakes are being overfished like crazy, we don’t particularly have that much coal and all this mining we are getting into cannot go past 2050. So what do we do with the little we have left?


Tribal Strife


If Bingu’s Anti Northern Region sentiments were nothing to go by then the election in 2019 told us that it is not just hatred against the north that is the norm. The MCP, read Chewa, feel that it was robbed and the Yao and Lhomwe, read UDF and DPP, for the first time banded together to keep power in the South. We saw some isolated overt outbursts of tribal bigotry in the aftermath of the election, but it has largely been muffled. But it is cancer, it is there and it needs to be explicitly seen to.


Illiteracy and cultural poverty


An idle, feebly educated youth is a time bomb. A culturally poor society means stuff like witchcraft and blind belief in religion will persist.


Mass Hysteria and Fake News


The recent lynch mobs in Mulanje, the stories about men being caught in the ceiling at the court, the clan clashes in Nkhata Bay and Mangochi all have a mass hysteria angle and some are fuelled by the very technology we acquired in this century.

The death of Tobacco 

We are a mono-economy, we rely on a crop that is being ditched globally. We might want to start looking at alternatives to tobacco.

Outro


Bakili said every Malawian would have a shoe on, Vision 2020 had incredible predictions about the just passed 20 years, Even the UN was in on it with their sweet-sounding  Millenium Development Goals.

We missed most targets and we will miss most of the upcoming ones, do not believe the party manifestos or the words of the likes of Walter Nyamilandu or Peter Mutharika. Our National Team will never play like Barcelona and Malawi will never develop to the level of Europe, not in our lifetime.

We cannot because we do not have the institutions to allow it. All we have is greed. We all want a house and a car and our kids to do well - we don't care whether that comes at the expense of others or the country.  We are fucked and will stay so until we build an inclusive and true democracy. 

Out.



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