Good people, tongues have been wagging since Soldier Lucius Banda performed live at Malawi Congress Party (MCP) Tambala Night last Friday.
The loudest of them all want to convince listeners that the United Democratic Front (UDF) legislator has crossed the floor.
They could be right or wrong.
But the standout thing about the live show in contention is that the musician MCP zealots saw on stage was actually an artist at work.
The politician Malawians want to politicise without end is in fact the lonely figure that stayed put on the opposition bench in Parliament while the rest of the UDF legislators shifted to the ruling side like birds of a feather.
Yet showbiz and law-making are just two sides of the same Lucius.
An artist with a different political affiliation is just an artist after all. MCP was saying ‘aye’ to this on the night of its black cockerel and income generating dinner and dance.
On the catwalk
Mzuzu hasn’t been on the country’s fashion map for years.
The city on the northern corridor linking to Tanzania has been fraught with fashion crimes—especially people wearing clothes of the same make and colour that pour from China via Tanzania.
Just like that, Mzuzu has been a distressing setting of the adage ‘birds of the same feather flock together’.
But the ever-green city, the home of Taifa Market Square and all that cross-border trade, has been in the news in honour of its fast-emerging fashion scene—particularly the exploits of designer Towera Mkandawire and Wezi Mzumara’s stable, Kwanzar PR.
The emergence of Mzuzu’s fashion scene has been told repeated lately, but ‘rags to hugs’ tales are always reinvigorating.
The arts-savvy minds cannot wait for Mzuzu Fashion Week starting October 14 to 17, a young women’s story of how they are confronting the cancer that keeps most female Malawians down and shreds their self-confidence and their potential offerings for public enjoyment.
No new hymn
It appears the CCAP Livingstonia Synod firebrands are fighting too many battles for their religiousness.
The believed battles come clear right at the entrance to their headquarters in Mzuzu where a billboard proclaims strong opposition to same-sex marriages, nationalisation of Chichewa language and the quota system of selecting students to public universities.
That seems surplus, platefuls of tithe flushed down the drain. But the synod’s leadership was back on the onslaught on Sunday during the launch of Tumbuka, Kyangonde and Tonga hymnbooks.
This is a matter in which secretary general Levi Nyondo urged against reproducing the book and adapting the hymns without consent, saying the church will not leave the matter in the hands of God, but courts of this world.
Artists, vendors, churches, and publishers, are we singing from the same hymnbook?
Save ye the esteemed clergy’s energy and church money by doing the right thing—don’t shoplift their offerings, but seek ye permission first and it shall be well in heaven and on earth. Alleluya!
