Excellence and senselessness is merciless

June 24 2021

Don’t get it personal. I will have to address Your Excellency, Personally. A year you have been at the helm. We love your poetry and words. But we, on a corner of town, think those words must be realised.

Congratulations for being in power for one year. How does it feel? For us on a corner of a street in town, it feels hard. We are not begging sympathy from you, but here is our case:

You told us about a million jobs, but some said it was a million jabs. No matter. Those million jobs were supposed to mean a million jabs against Covid-19.

But delays in shipments to have caused health facilities to run out of doses as hundreds are due to receive a second shot.

The country has so far received 300 000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the European Union, 102,000 from the African Union and 50,000 donated by India.

Inoculations started in April and the country was expecting a second shipment of 900 000 by the end of May, four weeks before the first vaccinated Malawians would be due a second dose.

But Health Minister Khumbize Kandodo has said that batch had been delayed by a recent surge in coronavirus cases in India, the world’s main AstraZeneca supplier, which forced the country to temporarily halt major vaccine exports to meet local demand.

Now hundreds of people seeking to get vaccinated are being turned away from the vaccination points.

This His Excellency is a huge letdown. Excellence without sense is merciless.

Which is why, we feel happy that we are not in Kampuchea or Kathmandu. Where democracy remains a dream. The trauma to get one of those one million jabs is a hustle.

People are getting from this street corner in town to get a jab in the outlying district hospitals, only to learn that the jabs have been taken back to town. In town, the jabs are nowhere.

Searching for a jab has been like seeking the Holy Grail. By the way, sir, I heard you talking about how we misconceive politics to be zokolana. I heard you talk about the Hellenic and Romantic meaning of politics and policy.

We heard that before, thank you.

Why should your people wait for vaccination to be determined by when the donors wake on the right side of the bed?

No sir.

There were 19 000 doses that were lighted like bonfire. The donors told us expiry date is not actual, neither is it real time.

But then, your Ministry of Health also called on citizens to get jabs within a month. So, if the jabs never got them within that time, how do you convince them their health is not affected?

Sorry.

When that month turns into several weeks which run into months, and there is a threat there may be a worse wave than you imagined, can we wait until August, as you beg for aid? We can’t wait any longer. The jabs should have been in your budget, this past week.

We call on you, Your Excellency, because we know you don’t tolerate nonsense and senselessness and mercilessness.