Godlessness in the last days

But understand this that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.

For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.

Avoid such people.

For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith.

But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.

This description of majority humans of the biblical end times in the Second Epistle by Paul the Apostle to Timothy (2 Timothy 3: 1 – 9) might have not yet come to pass in other parts of the world, but it surely currently is evident in Malawi.

Small wonder the yoke of mediocrity hangs heavy over the country; sinking it and suffocating it with each passing day because majority citizens, the leadership inclusive, are full of it.

But the standard set out by the same Scripture for an acceptable decision maker’s heart is that which oozes with positive attributes: justice, fairness, selflessness, impartiality, incorruptibility, consideration, humility and the ability to see things as they should be and undoubtedly not an iota of greed, self-interest and hindsight.

Yet Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) and Malawi Police Service (MPS) are impounding smuggled flour in Mchinji where it is reported most of it enters the country.

The Zambian flour has been selling at relatively lower prices than the maize available on the market.

And all this comes at a time when hunger is biting hard and yet there are no adequate stocks of maize in Agriculture Development Marketing Corporation (Admarc) depots.

The cost of living has unprecedentedly risen and there is a general decline in people’s living conditions, particularly due to remarkable challenges such as lack of direct budgetary support, soaring public debt and the floods that hit the country.

According to Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee, the country is reeling from a food deficit of 27.7 %, resulting in low maize supply.

And, in such a situation, even the most elementary economics book would tell of skyrocketing maize prices.

All things being equal, of course, in the highly value-added tax (VAT)-reliant dog-eat-dog Malawi economy MRA and MPS would not be faulted for being ‘prudent’ as they are acting within their ‘theoretical reasoning’ realm to see to it that the flour does not jump duty through use of uncharted routes.

But as it is that the Democratic Progressive Party government is struggling if not failing to stock Admarc depots with the staple maize with rationing going to as down as 10 kg in some depots, whose interest or welfare is the VAT exercised on the ‘saviour’ Zambian flour trying serve?

Is it really the right decision that chicken-brained MRA and MPS scares away Zambian cheaper flour or exercise duty on the same and make it unaffordable to majority poor Malawians as the said tax at times – as has been the trend in Malawi with bosses at MRA, Road Traffic Directorate, National Roads Authority and so forth – would just find its way into the authority’s officials who perhaps might snobbishly or madly scamper with it from one drinking joint to the other with its associates?