Secession? - Yes, Secession is Good!

Big people have spoken against federalism or secession of the peoples north of Nkhamenya, people like Chief Kyungu, Chikulamayembe, and big heads like Vuwa Kaunda. At this point it seems secession is bad, but with all due respect to my elders, I beg to differ, secession (federalism) is good and needs to be pursued, here is why.

Why Secessionists Secede

People secede to fix historical injustices, to protect their interests to better manage their affairs or just to show that they are free humans, this is rooted in the choice theory.  The PKK in Turkey, the Southern States in USA, Tibetans and Turkic Muslims in China, Some tribes in Thailand, Some Caucasians in South Africa, Some folks in Spain, Scotland, Eastern Ukrainians and even the ISIS guys…so many people want to secede and as such, feeling like seceding is no shame at all.

In the case of the people north of Kasungu, secession would be good in the following ways:

Millions of jobs would be created. A new state requires infrastructure: builders, transporters, administrators. Ministries would be created, ambassadors sent out, prisons, parliament and stadia built...many idle youths engaged.

Secession is a mark of liberty. Anyone is free to manage their affairs and if anyone secedes, they would feel good, certainly as they attain their sought after need, some sort of self actualization or catharsis, if you catch my drift.

Resources would better be managed. Bingu wa Mutharika said the people north of Kasungu dominate universities and civil service yet contribute little to the GDP, this would be a good opportunity for the rest of Malawi to better share the resources without worrying of parasites from north of Jenda.

On the other hand, the people north of Kasungu would use their little GDP to carter for themselves without feeling like Lilongwe is stealing. They would generate their own income from Chikangawa Forest, Lake Malawi, Nyika National Park or whatever they can sell to get by.

Secession would free the people north of Kasungu of wanton debt. A new state would not inherit any debt from the World Bank or IMF unless that money went into their territory which in this case is likely to be little, they would then start afresh, paying only for what they eat.

Secession would also be a good way to escape the bad government in Lilongwe. The archaic laws that punish gays, criminalize abortion, give too much power to the president would all be dumped. Imagine how a constitution drafted by minds born after the World War II would look like? It would reflect life as this century demands.

Secession would revitalize people, with many politically alienated and feeling powerless in the current political process, they would for the first time participate in a process they truly own and one in which their say can matter.

Secession would be in tandem age old black consciousness ideals. You see, the state of Malawi was not voluntarily created or endorsed by the native populace; it was forced on everyone by the Europeans during the scramble for Africa.

The Europeans knew but never cared about the different tribes that seem never to cleave when they made 

African nations. Secession would be the first step in creating an Africa by Africans; it is a good way to truly be independent and saying f**k you to the racist colonialists past and present.

T/A Kyungu said Malawi is united; he is one of the most naïve chiefs if that is his real outlook on Malawi. 

Malawi is not warlike but it is still one of the most divided nations. In courts people are identified by their tribes, in university people’s villages count – the kind of stuff that was happening in Rwanda before the genocide switch flipped. In Malawi tribe is silent, but material and where tribe is material, unity is utopia.

The people north of Kasungu are easy to mark, they have certain names, and they speak certain languages. In schools their kids cannot study in their native language, they have to learn another tribe’s language.

In workplaces if they are two of similar surnames it is fishy…this is true even for a soccer team. It is easy to feel threatened when you are being watched and marked and treated like vermin – is anyone surprised that these people want out?

From Kamuzu Banda to Peter Mutharika, it has always been the same. Select a few people from there as tokens and keep the north nothing but a green patch of dirt.

The people currently calling for secession in Malawi are greedy parrots and of shaky moral fibre, agreed, but to call their arguments shaky as well is dangerous.

You see, Karl Marx argued that an oppressor works hard to keep the oppressed, most of the people against secession are those that benefit from the status quo…here I will not mention the honourable chiefs like Kyungu and elders like Vuwa Kaunda out of respect.

And the thing about secession is that those outside the region have no say, the fate of someone in Karonga cannot be determined by someone in Nsanje, and so if anyone wants out, they are.

Nobody is going to lose their lives, Malawi houses some of the least militant people, we don’t have the guns or balls to start a war…the only time anyone is going to die is when a political idea like secession is taken personal by those with violent intents.

Opponents of secession should be coming to the fray with plausible and practical solutions like how the nation will ensure that is inclusive now that some sections say they are alienated - not just saying secession is bad and appealing to vague and abstract terms – unity and harmony.

Why should people stay together if they cannot reason together? The Sunni man can never truly live with a Shia, it is keeping them together as in the case of Iraq that creates trouble, some elements will never cleave and in Africa that element is tribe...from Rwanda, to Nigeria to Botswana.

I only spoke up because people want to hide, sidestep, sugar-coat and ignore the divisions amongst Malawians. This is Africa the land of tribes, if we are to run a nation, we must first acknowledge diversity and its issues and then do something about these issues otherwise...well, secession?

Secession is good, everyone needs to secede. Kamuzu Banda successfully championed the secession Nyasaland from the ‘stupid federation’ of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. You also need to secede from the oppressive landlord and build your own house, secede from your intrusive pastor and lead life your way, secede from your demanding wife and live a peaceful life, secede from fake friends and start over, secede from Facebook and live real life.

Now.

Rwandan Genocide: Just a Tip of Africa’s Potential

Every African is a genocide conductor and Africa is just a time bomb for more genocides and they will come.

Exactly 20 years ago today, things fell apart in Rwanda, for the next 100 days after 7 April, 300 people died per hour mostly Tutsi’s but also moderate Hutus. The final tally: about a million dead, rape ruled so did the Machetes.

To sum it quickly, The Hutus came to Rwanda before the Tutsis, The Hutus are darker and shorter while the Tutsis are taller and light complexioned.

The Germans and the Belgians that were stealing resources from Rwanda back in the day favoured the Tutsis for their looks. It was classic divide and rule tactics. In 1935, the Belgians actually created Identity cards that listed Rwandans as Tutsi or Hutu or Twa.

The Hutus were in majority in Rwanda and they felt insulted at the Belgians championing the Tutsis, its why in 1959 they sampled genocide waters and killed a few Tutsi and sent hundreds into exile.

I really shouldn’t be explaining this today!

Rwandan president Paul Kagame told a French magazine that France and Belgium took part ‘in the political preparation of the genocide and the participation of the latter in its very execution.’

Some blame the USA which is quick to poke its long nose in other conflicts but stayed away from Rwanda.

Some blame the Catholic Church whose clergy is said to have participated in the genocide itself and that the Vatican knew about it.

Some blame the toothless Organization of African Union for letting one of its own bleed without intervention.

The list is endless.

No disrespect to the dead, but Rwandans seem to forget that it was Rwandans killing Rwandans and nobody from outside lifted a panga knife.

Bill Clinton is not Rwandan and at the time USA had just been humiliated by street boys in Somalia in the famous Black Hawk Down incident, not to mention the fact that Rwanda had nothing to offer the US especially the Soviet Union having fallen.

France, Belgium, Germany? Well, what does independence mean? Well whatever it means, Rwanda attained it in 1962 and was thus supposed to steer its own ship, the colonialists are thus out of the blame Venn diagram.

OAU? Well, let us not even go there.

Rwanda made international headlines and much of the hype about the genocide owes to Hollywood the internet and CNN, in reality Africa and Africans have always been genocidal.

Let’s start from the very Rwanda. Everyone agrees the Tutsis and Hutus came to Rwanda from somewhere else, nobody says where the Twas came from, of course, because the Twas were the aborigines - the natives.

Right now their population in Rwanda is only 1% for a population that was the original settlers. History books write about them ‘losing land and moving to the hills.’

The Twas, who ruled and owned most of the African countries including Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania were brutally murdered by the other tribes.  In Malawi now, there are almost zero Twas – genocide took them.

Outsiders and some insiders look at Africans as a race with dark skin, big lips, curly hair and maybe huge penis and think them as a race. Big Mistake.

There is not a people on earth that is more variant and more divided than Africans and with the divisions, hatred.

There are about 3000 ethnic groups in Africa, each usually with their own language and some customs and superstitions.

Analysis alert – When the Europeans divided Africa, they needed to create about 3000 countries, with each tribe having a territory, and instead they created less than 60 and housed several incompatible tribes within a country, such as 370 in Nigeria only.

This creates problems, because, despite the tribes of Africa largely being black in colour, they are as incompatible as Jews and Palestinians, as such they are always fighting and arguing and wishing the other tribe vanished.

The Europeans that colonized Africa quickly recognized the divisions, so they emphasized divisions and it worked like charm. African tribes can work with any outsiders perfectly but not their immediate tribal rivals.

During the Biafran War in Nigeria that ended in 1970, over a million civilian died as the Igbo unsuccessfully tried to separate from the other tribes, and some Igbo claim genocide was attempted on them.

Nobody seems to care about the Burundian genocide of 1972 in which the Tutsi dominated army iced about 210,000 Hutus. Actually, some analysts believe that the Hutus in Rwanda had this genocide in mind and were sort of revenging when they launched the 1994 genocide.

Where in Africa are there no signs of genocide? In Kenya for example, when Mwayi Kibaki, of the Kikuyu tribe, was hurriedly sworn in as president in 2008 what happened?  Luo and Kalenjin tribes men went on the rampage killing Kikuyu tribesmen – is it not hard to equate election fraud with icing an innocent guy on his veranda who is the same tribe as the guy on the ballot paper?

You guys remember the Mfecane, the period when Mzilikazi, a king of the Matabele, dominated the Transvaal (1826 to 1836). He ordered widespread killings and devastation to remove all opposition to establish the new Ndebele order.  The whole region became nearly depopulated with about 2 million dead.

Same is true about Shaka the Zulu everywhere he went and met tribes his first instincts was to kill their men and rape the women… all genocidal.

I will take you closer to home, in my country Malawi, a beautiful country that has not seen war yet in modern history, it looks peaceful on the surface but the tribes there hate each other like the African books advises.

In Malawi, the number of a particular tribe in the university or civil service is subjected to scrutiny, if one tribe features more in a national team or a class it is viewed in askance and voting is along tribal lines – is such a country not genocide in incubation?

And it’s not just tribes, try being an Albino is Tanzania, people will kill you for being different and in pursuit of your bones for voodoo purposes.

The need to eliminate the other is so entrenched in Africans that even new concepts like Christianity and Islam can be used to spark genocide. I am talking about the Central African Republican, a simple thing as a rosary or a hijab can get you killed.

And it is almost like it is the African’s blood, whether in Somalia or in England or St. Louis or Jamaica there is always something that the African will use to try to take out the other: In Somalia its clans, in England and St. Louis its gangs and drug turf, in Jamaican its politics and drugs.

Some blame years of European domination and the blood peddling Abrahamic religions as having established the spirit of distrusting others , but the arguments falls short as Africans have been bloodthirsty even before Abraham or Jesus were on earth.

So, this week, the world will sit with Rwanda and shed crocodile tears over her dead, but no one will ask after the status of tribal hatred still in Rwanda now, whether the bad blood has been overcome and whether the minority’s firm grip on power helps.

What happened in Rwanda is that the Tusti grabbed power after the genocide and have ruled since, any Hutu that tries to speak out is jailed or exiled and labeled a Genocide denier. Ridiculous amount of aid have been pumped in and the progress Rwanda is undergoing does nothing to the century old rivalries.

Every day in the ghettos or grazing lands of Africa, is like a war zone, anyone can kill you for as many reasons as there are ways of killing a cat.

Every African has a genocide gene and Rwanda was just a sort of nuclear test to showcase what an African can do and has been doing.

As long as there are tribes, the biggest influence on the African – more than religion, they will always be room for open seasons on killing each other.

‘It sure feels like the 70’s Cambodia’

I released this press release after the University Council of the University of Malawi decided to close down the two main universities in Malawi...giving students two hours to vacate campus and they did so at gun-point. the PSU is the Polytechnic Students Union and  i am its spokesperson.

We the PSU feel that the decision to close down the university is not only morally, practically wrong but also illegal and illegitimate.

Poly Students were never in conflict with the University Council, actually we only knew of its existence after the ‘academic freedom’ battle began. To us, this fact tells us that the council lacks sufficient interest in the issue.

When lecturers downed their tools, the university council never sent them a bogus memo with typographical errors on fools’ day giving them notice of vacation. Why students? Is it because we have no legal muscle? We have been calling for dialogue on the issue but the warring sides refuse and chose to use us as pawns.

To add salt to the wound; take Lemmy who hails from Chitipa and he has two hours to pack and then find transport money to go to Chitipa, and its already 2pm. Is this decision made with ‘fairness’ in mind or it was just some sort of vendetta?

Polytechnic students chose to take a stand in the issue, as the adage says; fight for something or fall for everything, we analysed the academic freedom battle and found it sweet and worthy the ride so when Poly lecturers joined the battle by downing tools we never whined, we giggled with excitement. When the same lecturers dropped the battle we took it from where they left it.

Our argument was simple, learning these days is learner centred thus academic freedom is chiefly for the students.  Secondly, we saw bribes and cowardice in the lecturers’ decision to drop the issue, so we demanded an explanation and when we heard from PASCOW’s chair, Salima that it was due to tribal allegiances, we declared Poly a no fly zone for lecturers, anybody would. 2011 is no time to be dabbling in tribal foolishness and as lecturers they should know better. So the students; Lhomwe, Tumbuka, Chewa and Sena fought on.

We feel that the involvement of police in this issue is not legal. We are fighting with Mukitho and how do you expect the same Mukitho to handle us? It’s why we have police officers gassing students and beating us like bags of sand. 

Police involvement is also illegal in that the Kampala Declaration forbids any police presence on any campus or where African intellectuals are...why do Malawian police, led by the whole commissioner invade our campus? Yes we know most of them are brutes but at least they should have heard of the word ‘law.’

Now we have lost a student, Justice Mwafulirwa,  yes he had lung trouble but what sparked the final blow is cleary the gas that was settled on campus, there have been about five cases of students collapsing in the hostels since the teargas was fired, and they have been none since the semester started, draw your own conclusions.

We will not speak much on the minister of education here, because he has failed us miserably and if he thinks this is a lie, let him try to come to Poly one day.

Finally, we have our chancellor, forget the debate about the legality of his post as chancellor; to us he is the one to blame for all that has transpired in this conflict and to achieve peace will also demand his hands as well.

When the president was being inaugurated, he vowed never to close down any university in his reign...how ironic and funny does it feel to finally break the vow on fools’ day?

At first we thought the president would quickly apply Machiavellian philosophy and fire Mukitho to make peace with the whole load of critics, most of whom are influential, but to our shock Mukitho was glorified and the rest vilified effectively starting the ‘Chinsinga wars.’

The details are not our concern, but we are the sufferers, we know that as university students we have the power to start a revolution but that depends on the failure of government not on a single lecturer. The university system is too complex for anybody to manipulate.

The way forward depends on what the president will do and on the way the grieving lecturers will be handled. Already Poly students are swearing to continue where they left off if any lecturer or student is fired.

 As a union, and as we said at our previous press conference, the issue will only rest in our hearts if the law takes its course, we can’t be having anybody coming to campus and saying and doing  things in the name of national security especially when they have never been to a campus before.

We hope this is not the beginning of the Khmer Rouge type of government which hated intellectuals and eliminated most of them because of the ideas of a few. Already, we cannot seem to stage a demonstration without the City Assembly and police firmly refusing us permission.

 We also should take time to salute those who have stood firm in this time of battle, names like Kamchezera, Kapasula, Salima, Amin, Kanyongolo, Mungoshi, Sithole, Morra and Mgala.

PSU would also like to thank the public and the independent media for being understanding and empathetic even when we were being violent and barbaric. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

The law, through the constitution and the Kampala Declaration speaks of academic freedom, let government grant and assure it.

As PSU, we are disappointed in the system and we hope that when we return we shall find no spies in classes, no intimidated lecturers, no uniformed brutes on campus, and we hope that we will return to campus very soon as the world, including the police force, is waiting for our well trained input.

In your face, Mutharika – This new website seems to say!

"The Fedayeen Bingu wa Mutharika has been formed in Malawi. The Fedayeen Bingu wa Mutharika is similar to that of Fedayeen Saddam of Iraq's regular armed forces but rather operated as a paramilitary unit of irregular forces.   Bingu wa Mutharika formed a tribal Mulhako wa Alhomwe which is an organization made up of his tribe people."

I didn't write that, it's a quote from the yet to be introduced Website http://freedomanddemocracy.atmalawi.com/ which is already promising fireworks even in its construction stage...it takes a swipe at the Mutharika government and proposes cutting edge solutions to the maladies of the Malawi nation.

I will blog more on this Website but here are some excerpts from the site:

.......

Government

The People's Movement for Freedom and Democracy (PMFD) has been formed to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and a community in which no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, tribalism, ignorance or conformity. We champion the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals, we acknowledge and respect their right to freedom of conscience and their right to develop their talents to the fullest. We aim to disperse power, to foster diversity and to nurture creativity. We believe that the role of the state is to enable all citizens to attain these ideals, to contribute fully to their communities and to take part in the decisions which affect their lives.

The economic system that the PMFD shall embrace is the free market system where there shall be a rule of law. In order to achieve fairness among all the citizens of Malawi the PMFD is calling the ruling party of Malawi government to abolish the current election system and sit down with us to introduce Electoral College system based on the U.S. model. Each province shall be allocated Electoral College. For example: South Malawi = 32, Central Malawi = 30, North Malawi = 28. Electoral College required to win presidency will be 55 electoral college and above (The objective of Electoral College is to make all provinces relevant and to encourage participation of all citizens that everyone's vote count).

Policy 

First preference of the PMFD's economic policy is to improve trade relationships with other countries.  The PMFD economic policy is intended to make Malawi a market oriented economy, where most decisions are taken by private individuals and business firms. More flexibility will be enjoyed by business firms. Introduction of new products would help in economic growth of Malawi. These economic policies are to create new economic opportunities and the creation of millions of good paying jobs. Malawi needs to diversify its economy and also create business opportunities for the rural Malawians where 80% of its population live. The economic plan that the PMFD will embrace will help a rural Malawian farmer to market their products and get paid for what it is worth.  In order to attract foreign investments the PMFD is determined to build railroads and roads to connect the entire Malawi.  The PMFD is going to invest in its own people by building modern schools in rural Malawi and introducing Internet and computers to them.  The PMFD is also to build more hospitals to alleviate the crowding that exist right now. These projects will be done on provincial level.

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Whoever is behind this site is very visionary and has my blessings after all ints within the realm of my blog: protest!