Dear Mr President

Today I will not talk about politics or anything. I want to have a heart-to-heart conversation with you as a father to your own biological children and as a father figure to many Malawians. I hope you will lend me your ears.

I have always wanted to tell you this but I could not have courage to do so, but now I feel I am ready to tell you. It is something so dear to my heart and something that I know so many Malawians might relate to.

But, before I tell you my story, allow me to digress a little bit, I know I said I do not want to talk about politics, but I could not resist applauding honourable Peter Dimba. Mr President, you and your party are lucky to have Dimba. His constituency is blessed to have him represent them and as a country, I wish we had more Peter Dimbas representing us. Fiercely people speak from their hearts and not their bellies.

When Dimba spoke about the evils of corruption and how it has led to shortages of drugs in hospitals, I almost shed a tear. Right there, he reminded me of my personal experience when I faced the evils of corruption.

One afternoon on October 26 2020, I found myself at Zomba Central Hospital where I had gone after a terrible miscarriage. As I sat on a hard wooden bench waiting to be treated, which took forever while I almost bled to death, I could eavesdrop on the nurses’ conversations, especially how it was difficult for them to give a patient some critical treatment because they were no drugs.

I sat there and, I convinced myself that when it was my turn, the nurses will have all the necessary medication for my procedure. Alas, that was a dream, a bad one.

I was called to the doctor’s room. There, I was told they were going to do a dilation and curettage (D and C). But there was one problem they weren’t going to give me any painkillers because they had none. It was like my heart was being ripped apart from start to finish. Mr President, ask any woman who has gone through this procedure, it is a painful one. It is the sort of pain I would never wish even on my worst enemy.

I pitied the hospital personnel. They had good intentions and worked really hard but there were no resources to do their work efficiently. Mr. President, these are things that we go through every day. There are people who are dying of treatable diseases not because the doctors don’t know what to do but because there are no resources.

Everywhere you turn, there is corruption. But this can be fixed as honourable Dimba said, empower the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to be fully independent and not to have the independence that depends on other institutions’ authority. It defeats the purpose.

Mr President, I hope you agree with honourable Dimba that we cannot let people loot this country as they wish. Allow ACB to do its work without interfering.