Dzuka Malawi: Goodbye 2016, the year Malawi lost hope

The year 2016 finally is closing and with us, we are worse off than where we started. Companies like Carlsberg sold to some French firms because our conglomerate Press Corporation limited owned by us plebeians but enjoyed by a few rich could not buy part of the company. You ask if we have brains at all.

We end the year with everything facing wrong direction- there is very little if no food in homesteads, politicians are busy fighting using speeches and rebuttals that do not create hope. As Michelle Obama told NBC this week, “Americans now know what it means to live without hope.” She spoke of a Malawian.

Michelle Obama might have been talking of election of Donald Trump with his empty slogans, but for us we live without hope. Our grandparents are departing every day, many still wallowing in poverty, many without pension fund, surviving on handouts from their sons and daughters if at all they are remembered. There is no hope even for the dying old people.

Who has hope that 2017 will bring improved service delivery like basic electricity and water. We now know a very familiar story, no rains or too much water- as if nobody ever saw these challenges. Malawi has lost hope of every having electricity and water as once it was. We have no hope of our politicians listening to de-politicise ESCOM and Waterboards appointments and hire right people. Our interests are self-saving, partisan and greed.

Dzuka Malawi, cry my beloved Malawi, who has hope of simple disputes in our Universities being resolved. Both sides resolute and nobody to save the situation. We have again abdicated our responsibilities; we march for abortion not for living albinos or old people attacked as witches or even education for our children.

We end 2016 without hope that the kwacha will rebound, nor anything intelligent will come from our policy planners. Look at our over dependence of that smoking crop Tobacco. Government full of jokes talking of diversification yet no hope of starting serious path towards it. Tourism, the only readily available nature resources is underfunded and no attention is paid to marketing the country right, yet we spend billions in supporting tobacco, even when in 2016 we could not sale most of the tobacco, next year we will grow more and cry more as a hopeless nation.

We end 2016 with more policies launched, more programmes promised. But hey who are we cheating here, we have no hope that the connected corrupt people will stop looting our national coffers. Joyce Banda might have helped in depleting coffers, but one thing she did right was to arrest anyone suspected to have been involved. Since 2014, nobody in Malawi has committed any offence and we are a corrupt free nation- what a hopeless nation.

We end 2016 without hope that while fuel prices are going down, ours will ever go down as greedy oil firms continue ripping us off, there is no hope for our mothers that delivery of babies will be safe, there is no hope for our young children that jobs will be plenty, there is no hope that even the oil discovered on Lake Malawi will benefit the poor people along the lake as fishing does, there is no hope for people at Chimwazulu in Ntonda, Ntcheu if the mining of ruby there will bring any difference.

There is no hope that Malawian firms will benefit from major projects from Government to build capacity as Chinese, Mota Engil and Asian owned businesses with capacity to palm oil the political decision makers loot our contracts for buildings, roads, road traffic services, immigration, national IDs and agriculture subsidy.

There is no hope that our Banking system, which tortures a poor man for a cheque cashing but gladly paid MWK500 million on a Saturday to activators will reform

We end 2016 with only two smiles, that Malawians still look after each other as those youth who walked 300km to save some lives at Kamuzu Central Hospital, like those charities feeding orphans across the country with no funding and like the many widows and child-headed households who struggle every day.

We smile for the Malawi National Netball Team for good results. We still cry for the mens football which is a total waste of time. We still cry of corrupt road traffic services partly contributing to fatal accidents by certifying unroadworthy vehicles. We cry for our immigration which donates citizenship to Rwandan genocide perpetrators.

We are a nation without hope when a Minister of Information instead of answering a Leader of Opposition in a democracy with irrefutable evidence, he goes for trivia and responds stupidly with political venom that is not worth any sane mans attention.

Dzuka Malawi, we cant place hope in our fake prophets and church leadership which cares more about unborn child than the living, we cant place hope in our politicians who keep talking, launching policies and motions, yet they keep spending and we keep crying.

Dzuka Malawi, we will have hope when we abandon tobacco today, get the billions into Tourism and fair infrastructure not to Mota Engil or Asians but to Malawian firms, have all corrupt officials arrested, stop subsidy and use the money for new irrigation systems wherever there is a river and finally when we have leaders both in opposition and Government who are not greedy, but those that love Malawi.

2016 was another wasted year, as we start posturing for elections in the next 29 months, MBC decided to crown our hopeless year, awarding Innovators of Innovators of the Year award to National Netball Team. Make sure your children don’t listen to this grand mediocrity-otherwise they will stop thinking for solutions in life, as we all have, as all institutions like ESCOM and Water Boards, Immigration and Road Traffic, Irrigation and Housing departments all have. I for one, I have no hope that 2017 the poor will move out of poverty!

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