Kachaje: Cancer needs Chemotherapy not Panado
Malawi is a sick nation, socially, politically and economically. While speaking during the consecration of the Very Reverend Father George Desmond Tambala as Bishop of Zomba Diocese, our President lamented; “We are full of cynicism and we have no faith in ourselves as a nation. We want change but we don’t want to change. We want to take a positive direction but yet we are blinded by negative attitudes”. He went further to explain that the spiritual health of a country determines the thinking, the attitudes and the character of a nation.
More than 50 years ago we included in our national anthem prayer, one of our core spiritual diseases – envy. In Vision 2020, we stated: “Malawians have low self-esteem. They have no confidence in local products and in their culture. The challenge is to restore self -confidence and pride in being Malawian. Malawians must also be assertive and confident and be free from servitude and low self-esteem.”
We seem to have complicated matter when we adopted a liberal type of democracy and our tribal and regionalisticpolitics isn’t working. Even the President acknowledged this when opening the 46th session of Parliament; “Mr Speaker Sir, this is the time for us to shape our destiny with a common mindset. But sadly our democracy seems to have taken away our national duty and sense of responsibility. Our style of democracy seems to be our curse more than a blessing for us”.
Why then, despite knowing our problems, we have remained underdeveloped and non-progressive? Simple; we are not yet ready to undergo the painful chemotherapy treatment that is needed to heal us. We still prefer taking Panado just to relieve some of our pain temporarily. We know our style of democracy isn’t working but we are not ready to do an honest and sober assessment and do things differently.
We have been implementing the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS) II for about five years now. We planned to have economic growth of above 6% each of the five years. Sadly, there has been no single year when we registered economic growth of 6% and above. What we have achieved is deepening poverty, growing inequality and the poor have become poorer. We have miserably failed economically but we are not ready to change. We are not willing to undergo chemotherapy. We prefer taking Panado to relieve the pain temporarily.
Every Malawian democratically elected President has “successfully” managed to leave the economy worse off than how he/she found it, leaving the poor, poorer. Each government has abused chiefs and paraded them on National Television to deepen the political divide. Each government has come up with tramped up treason charges for members of the opposition. Each government has refused to listen to technocrats and denied them space to administer economic therapy. As a result, we are stuck in poverty and we are sinking deeper and deeper.
“But our children will never forgive us for wasting time and failing to develop Malawi now. History will never forgive us”, says our concerned president, Professor Arthur Peter Mutharika. Well, since you are in the driving seat Mr President, we are all waiting for direction from you Sir. Do we continue taking Panado, or you will be the brave one to switch to chemotherapy?
Follow and Subscribe Nyasa TV :