Human Rights for the Poor? No

Three people were killed for being suspected blood suckers in T/A Mabuka’s area in Mulanje on Saturday, 16 September, 2017.

A day before the Mulanje incident, two ambulances had been forcibly stopped and its drivers and passengers attacked for being suspected blood suckers in Phalombe. Reports of the two incidents were the beginning of blood sucking narratives in Malawi in 2017.

At the peak of the narratives, nine suspected blood suckers were killed by vigilantes. Services were disrupted in affected areas. For example, the Malawi Blood Transfusion Services (MBTS) suspended blood collection exercises in affected districts. Travelling at night became dangerous. Businesses closed earlier than before the narratives. Evening prayers stopped. The United Nations and Peace Corps withdrew staff from the affected areas. In short, life in Malawi changed during the period of blood sucking narratives.

An exceptionally brilliant psychologist explained that the blood sucking narratives were an expression of social and economic tensions. “People are trying to find an explanation, some way of making sense of what is happening [in their lives]…. It’s almost a symbolic representation of the life, blood or hope being drawn out of them, being sucked out of them,” he said.

Nobody listened to the wisdom of the psychologist. Nobody attempted to understand what the people were demonstrating against through the blood sucking narratives. The indigenous voice of blood sucking narratives was ignored. Instead, people in the areas were called names.

The United Nations Department of Safety and Security, based on information from UN officers in Malawi, suggested that blood sucking narratives were a product of “illiteracy” and “idle minds.”

The Medical Society of Malawi called blood sucking narratives a mental disorder. “It is the considered view of the Society that such blood suckers do not exist! This is purely Mass Hysteria,” said the Society in a statement.

The Society added that it was disappointed with mainstream and social media, saying there had “been irresponsible sensationalisation of rumours of blood sucking vampires” and that this had “the potency of perpetuating fear and anxiety in the population, with the exponential negative effects we have seen so far.”

Civil Society Organisations added their voice to the story of the moment. “Civil Society Organisations meeting in Lilongwe on 20th October 2017, would like to condemn in the strongest terms, the continued descent into anarchy brought about by the irrational and unsubstantiated belief in superstition and witchcraft characterised with rumour mongering, in the ongoing chaos that has ensued with the rash of accusations of bloodsuckers rampaging in the districts of Mulanje, Thyolo, Chiradzulu, Nsanje [and] Blantyre,” said a statement signed by Timothy Mtambo and his usual company.

The CSOs noted that the crisis was “creating space for unscrupulous individuals to break the law.” The CSOs said they believed that the “main factor” was “thugs who are targeting the rich to steal and damage property,” clearly accusing the poor of stealing.

The statement cited a Blantyre incident in which a medical doctor returning from work was attacked as a “typical example of how tactful these thugs are using fear to steal from people in the name of hunting for blood suckers.”

On 13th October, 2017, the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) issued a statement that started by describing 2015 and 2016 as years characterised by bad news in Malawi.

“In the past two years, Malawi has experienced social cultural beliefs that are very archaic, un-progressive and detrimental to the development of this country. These trends have certainly put our country on a hot spot negatively,” said CCJP.

Every institution bashed the people for demonstrating against their hardships. Not even a single institution listened to the expert, the psychologist, that blood sucking was a demonstration against hardships people were facing.

In Mulanje and Phalombe people had grown and harvested a lot of pigeon peas in 2017 in anticipation of good or better prices than the previous year. In 2016, the crop was selling at K700 per kg. This was the first time pigeon peas had fetched such high prices and people in the districts had legitimate high expectations for 2017. However, the price on the market was in some cases as low as K100 per kg.

Waiting for an annual income that never came was a tragedy. And tragedy has no other name. People were angry and had to demonstrate. The demonstrations spread to Nsanje, parts of Zomba, Blantyre and Karonga where people had different hardships.

Now July 2019, some people are demonstrating against their loss in the May elections, and all the organisations that spoke against the 2017 demonstrations are silent. The UN is silent. CCJP is silent. The Medical Association of Malawi is silent. Mtambo who called the 2017 demonstrations archaic and barbaric is describing his demonstrations as a human right.

So, when rural community members demonstrate and engage in violence, it is illiteracy, idleness, barbaric, archaic, mass hysteria, superstition and witchcraft. When urban community members demonstrate and engage in violence, it is a human right.

When Chakwera wearing a suit runs on the road with thousands, it is a human right. When rural people do the same, it is mass hysteria. When a former Vice President plays the choir master role in a demonstration, it is his human right and pursuit of justice, not a product of mass hysteria.

There is a way in which rural communities of Malawi are considered second-class citizens. It seems human rights are for urban communities, the elite, because even the poor urban residents are classified with similar adjectives as rural community members.

But never be fooled. There are ways in which rural community members hit back at elite, urban residents. Blood sucking was one way. They will hit back at the foolishness of the violent demonstrations happening now, some day.

There was a Vice President

The end of Saulos Chilima’s political career was in the beginning of UTM. A young man who was rising is now falling down, disappearing into a forgotten past.

It was Callista Mutharika who first announced that the DPP convention should elect Chilima as the party's presidential candidate for the May 2019 elections. But in doing so, Callista made a cultural mistake that killed Chilima in his political womb. (The two-part cultural mistake will be detailed in a story being written now.)

The story of Chilima shall be told for generations as an example of what not to do. Here is a Vice President who has become an embarrassment to himself and his supporters.

One family in Chigumula had so much faith in Chilima. The family supported him with vehicles and money. “We were foolish to help him,” a family member said recently. The family has lost faith in Chilima because of his actions since his loss in the May elections.

Chilima has been miscalculating his moves since he resigned from DPP. His plan to take over DPP from APM collapsed. Weeks before the convention, the situation became clear that Chilima could not beat APM.

UTM was not in Chilima’s political plans. He had flown too high and did not find the skies he thought would give him a political home. He fell down and, to cover his shame, formed the UTM.
He traveled to US, Nigeria and UK on fund raising mission but came back without the anticipated amounts. He had to find a way of raising money locally and loans may not be ruled out.

He told his supporters that he would win the election. He lost, a miserable number three. He told his supporters that he had a plethora of evidence that the May election was rigged. He has failed to produce that evidence in court. He helped organise and participated in demonstrations, saying Tipp Ex messed up results tabulation. But he has told the court in Lilongwe that Tipp Ex did not affect vote counting and tabulation.

Chilima is a man who was going to be an example of progress; now he is an example of regression. He was supposed to be in his second term as Vice President of Malawi but he has added the prefix “former” to his title. He was supposed to be in State House, but he is now standing hundreds of metres away from State House during demonstrations. He was supposed to be protected by men in camouflage, but he is the man in camouflage, matching on the roads of Malawi. He was supposed to be in a job, he is now jobless.

If he had been culturally and politically wise, Chilima would have been speaking at international conferences. He would have been an expert in the complex subject of balancing private and public sectors. Not so: a man who was supposed to be writing books on topics of global interest has now become a topic in books about failed politicians.

Chilima was supposed to be growing into an elderly states man, but he is turning into a boy, kind of ending in the beginning of his political life.

These Two Need a Meeting with Jesus

The night was almost over. The sea was calm after a stormy night. The disciples heard their Teacher, Jesus Christ, speak to the sea, “peace be still,” and nature obeyed. And the disciples wondered at a man who could speak to nature!

Matthew, the Gospel writer, records an interesting event after Jesus and his disciples ended their journey on a stormy sea that became calm.

In Chapter 8 Matthew says, “And when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demoniacs met him, coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no one could pass that way.” Notice that Jesus was alone. The disciples stood at a distance, or had taken a different route because “no one could pass” the road that Jesus took. There were two boys, the Bible calls them demoniacs, those possessed by demons.

The two lived in a graveyard. They were dangerous. They injured people. They did not listen to anyone, not even to themselves because they had lost conscious. No wonder, no one could pass that way. And that was the way Jesus took, says the Bible.

The description of the two demoniacs in the Bible fits well with Timothy Mtambo and Gift Trappence. These two boys, like the possessed, live in their own world. They do not listen to anyone. They only speak. One would say, Mtambo and Trappence have no ears. They have a mouth only.
They speak as if they are the last authority in the universe, almost like they created life. They love violence. They are happy to see private and public property destroyed. Do they have conscious at all? No. People possessed by demons do not have conscious.

That morning, when Jesus took the way that all people avoided, he met the two demoniacs. Matthew records an interesting meeting. And behold, the demons cried out, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?”

The disciples, watching from a distance and catching the conversation, walked towards Jesus but still at a distance. Jesus did not hurry to cast out the demons. He let them speak. In doing so, Jesus was helping the two boys to understand that they needed God’s power to live a normal life, away from tombs.

Mark, a Gospel writer who is brief in his reports, reports this story with details, not typical of him. Luke has the story as well. It is John, the youngest and most beloved disciple of Jesus, that did not write the story. Perhaps John kept a distance for fear of his life and did not witness the event.

After a conversation, Jesus cast out the demons, about 4000 of them, meaning 2000 demons were in each of the two boys. Satan is real. Demons are real in our day. Mtambo and Trappence need to meet Jesus, so he can cast out demons of violence in them. (Is it not interesting that demonstrations which Mtambo and Trappence love most, seem to be an extension of the word demons?)

In speaking of his days as an organiser of demonstrations, Undule Mwakasungula has consistently said that he “was led by Satan,” a way of saying he was possessed by demons. Satan works in a way that at the possessed does not know that he is possessed until he is freed by Jesus.

One day, Jesus took the way of Undule, the way that no man could pass. That was when Undule had no ears, when he listened to no one. Jesus met Undule, in his own words, sick and on death bed. That day, Jesus touched Undule, healed him and made him a servant of the Lord.

The prayer of the faithful in Malawi should be that Jesus should take the way of Mtambo and Trappence. They need a meeting with Jesus because only Jesus can speak to people who do not listen, people without ears.

When that happens, Mtambo and Trappence shall be able to raise their hands with a joyous shout, “the Lord is good, all the time, for he saved us from demons/trations”.

Justice? What Justice?

The lead story in The Nation newspaper today is headlined “Synod Backs Costly Airport Shutdown.”

General Secretary of the Livingstonia Synod of the CCAP is quoted as saying his church is supporting demonstrations organised by HRDC. “As a church we have vowed to fight together with people who are mourning that the elections were rigged. We will make sure justice prevails.”

The reporter of the story, Andrew Nyondo, leaves Reverend Nyondo here, with that quotation and goes on to report on what HRDC and a University of Malawi academician said of the demonstrations.

You have to wonder, really: what happened to journalism in Malawi? This was time to ask the reverend a question:

Reverend, what justice are you pursuing with violent demonstrations when the matter is in court where MCP and UTM are seeking justice?

Anyway, this is journalism in Malawi. We are waiting for Zeinab Badawi to ask such valid questions?

The Nation ran a second story titled “AG ‘mired in Conflict of Interest’ in Polls Case” on its front page. The story is a failed attempt to cover up the opposition’s failure to make a case in court.

Instead, The Nation is attempting to divert attention away from Saulos Chilima’s admission that there was no rigging to a silly debate on the duties of the office of the Attorney General.
The story itself says it is within the AG’s legal mandate to represent the Malawi Electoral Commission. Yet the story attempts to label the AG as partisan as if the MEC is a political party.

Grow up guys at Nation!

There is a silent majority in Malawi that is aware that the aim of MCP (and its baby HRDC) and UTM is to topple government not to pursue justice in court. If the aim were justice in the courts, MCP (and its baby HRDC) and UTM would have waited for the court case.

But they knew from the beginning that their case was going to collapse in court, hence resorting to violence.

What is to "invest in power generation"?

President Peter Mutharika’s speech in Parliament last week was great in substance and style. But his critics have faulted him on power generation in Malawi.


The President said: “Let us be honest to admit that we did not invest to expand our energy generation. For fifty years, we kept thinking as if Malawi would remain what it was in the 1960s.”
Journalists, including those we respect for long service in the industry, say the President was wrong.


Social media commentators, even those with PhDs, have gone to town on the President, saying there was investment in power generation in the last 50 years, hence we have electricity. The argument of the President’s critics is understandable but not true. 


If the President’s speech was as nice as I have suggested, if the President’s speech was well written, including in matters of punctuation, how could the good speech writer be so careless to use the word “invest” in appropriately?


I would like to bring your attention, dear readers, to the conclusion that the word “invest” was used correctly in the President’s speech. The intended meaning was the dictionary meaning, which I think critics have missed.


One widely acceptable way of making meaning is to look at the grammar of a word and history/context of the issue being discussed. The Cambridge Dictionary defines “invest” as “the act of putting money, effort, time, etc. into something to make a profit or get an advantage.”


Key to the word “invest” is the future aspect, a time in future when profit or gain shall be made. Profit or gain from an investment does not happen at the time of investing, no, not at all, but in future. In Chinyanja, “to invest” is kubzala (to plant) and the profit or gain is kholola (harvest). We plant to eat next season because in the season we are planting we eat what we planted last season. Likewise, we invest to make a gain or profit in future. 


So, what did the President mean when he said “we did not invest to expand our energy generation” in the last 50 years? According to Cambridge Dictionary, the President meant we did not construct power generation plants that would gain or profit Malawi in future. We did not construct power stations to meet future demand. The power plants that were constructed were for power demand, then, not now. This brings us to the history part of meaning making. What is the history of power in Malawi?


Let us start in 1972. Malawi had 49 megawatts of electricity, out of which ESCOM was producing 39 megawatts. The rest was being produced by private institutions, tea estates, for example, that felt ESCOM power was not reliable for their work. As early as 1972, power demand in Malawi was more than ESCOM installed generation capacity.  Between 1972 and 2014, we constructed and commissioned Nkula B, Tedzani I, II and III, Wovye, and Kapichira I and II. Our total installed generation capacity is 351 megawatts. Our current demand, according to the Ministry of Energy, is about 450 megawatts.


We are generating less than current power demand in Malawi. This clearly means that at no point in time did we construct and commission power generation plants with more capacity than we needed. Doing so would have been investing in power generation (constructing and commissioning power plants for future gain and profit, to meet future demand, not present demand, but future demand.) The President was right. We have not done that (invest in power generation) in the last 50 years. Instead, we simply constructed to meet present demand, then.


Unlike Malawi, Zambia invested in power generation. In 1972, when we had 49 megawatts of power, Zambia had 1600 megawatts, a lot more than the country’s demand then. Zambia was constructing power generation plants for the future. Zambia was investing in power generation.


We did not invest until now when we are working on major projects that shall give us an installed capacity of 2500 megawatts between now and 2027, capacity that shall be more than projected demand. Then, with more power power than demand, we shall say we invested in power generation, according to the dictionary meaning of the word “invest.” 

Lesson From Chinani

How many of you, my Malawian readers, have been to or have ever heard about Chinani?

Chinani is a trade centre in Phalombe, unknown to most of Malawians. Yet in this corner, lies a big lesson in a small way. Chinani Football Team has a ground at the trade centre. The ground is fenced using locally available, cheap materials.

Now Chinani Football Team is good at the game and their ground is known locally as Chinani Stadium. Gate fee for games is K100 and at times the team makes over K200,000 from a game. Chinani Football Team is well organised and offers some lessons for all of us, especially teams that consider themselves big.

In some ways, Chinani Football Team has commercialised, although in what might be considered a small way.

We sometimes think that because super league teams have failed to commercialise then everybody else has failed too. We sometimes think that we urban folks are better organised than rural folks.

Not all times. Chinani is one example. And there are many teams like making money from local fenced grounds like Chinani.

Door to National Service

It has been like this for many years: US citizens come to volunteer in Malawi for two years and leave, often with fond memories and a passion to help end extreme poverty; their lives changed, forever.

Some, like Michael Buckler, have continued to help Malawi while back in the US. Others, like Adam Gaskins, have come back to found NGOs that are working with rural people. Buckler founded Village X, an organisation that is drilling boreholes in rural corners of Malawi.

 

All this is good, yet not enough. Peace Corps volunteers who lived in Malawi left one desire that was never met.

Peace Corps volunteers in Malawi, and across the region, have inspired a generation of young people who have developed a passion to help end extreme poverty in their own countries. Sadly for Malawi, there was no program for young people to volunteer and get life changing experiences by helping rural people realize their potential and meet their needs.

Of course, once every year, in April, there was Youth Week, a voluntary week in which young people did social services in their areas. But that was during one party system of politics under Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda.

Youth Week ended once Malawi adopted multiparty politics of government in May 1993. In fact, that year’s Youth Week was poorly patronised because multiparty advocates castigated the week as oppressive. The idea of voluntary work was suffocated.

Now there is an opportunity, for young people to volunteer not just for a week, but for a year; a year of living and working with rural people and helping them help themselves.

CorpsAfrica, founded by Liz Fanning, has rolled out in Africa, starting with Morocco, now Senegal and Malawi. Says the introduction on CorpsAfrica website:

“Modelled after the successful Peace Corps program, CorpsAfrica will recruit men and women from developing countries of Africa to move to high-poverty communities within their own country. Each volunteer will stay in a host community for one year to create and support small projects that eliminate barriers to economic growth and prosperity.”

The website adds that CorpsAfrica will build up confidence through national service, give volunteers job skills, “and an understanding of poverty that only comes from living it.” The hope is that CorpsAfrica volunteers will be the next generation of NGO staffers, government officials, academics, business leaders, journalists, philanthropists, parents. (For more go to www.corpsafrica.org)

The startup director for CorpsAfrica in Malawi is Adam Gaskins, a Peace Corps who volunteered in Dedza. He came back to Malawi to continue helping people help themselves. Adam has experience in working with people, especially those in rural areas. Prior to joining CorpsAfrica, Adam founded and served as CEO of Nutreerich, a commodities export company based in Malawi that assists farmers in supply chain management and crop diversity. He holds a degree in business administration with an emphasis on management from Northern Kentucky University. He is fluent in Chichewa.

There is something powerful in voluntary work, something that makes former Peace Corps volunteers come back to Malawi to help. That something powerful will now be planted in Malawians volunteering in Malawi. That, I think, is the desire left by Peace Corps volunteers, now being satisfied.