My Turn

How Malawi can succeed

It is very easy for a country to succeed in all its development strategies. It is as easy as ABC or drinking a glass of water. Why am I saying this? It is because a country is governed by good ideas coming from our good leaders. A country achieves its goals when the rulers are united. That is when rulers follow the best ideas their predecessor had in governing the State. For it is not veracious for the successor to start gossip or schmoozing about the bad things that his/her predecessor was doing. No! It is a matter of leaving those bad things aside and concentrating only on the good things, which the previous leader did.

Unity among our political leaders is what is needed for Malawi to succeed. It’s not time for political games. It’s time for our leaders to be serious when it comes to formulating ideas of running the State. Most of the time our leaders are busy criticising the previous government on the damages which they caused in the country instead of focusing on how to come up with good solutions to the problem brought by the predecessor. The game of blaming the foregoing government will take us nowhere as a nation, for it is of no good to cry over spilt milk. All we need are courageous leaders who are not in power simply to point out mistakes made by the earlier leaders, but rather who are in power to come up with immediate remedies to the problems the country is facing.

The rational element should be that which our leaders must embrace to govern the State in spite of the differences we have when it comes to our political parties. It is good to know that our country Malawi is one and, therefore, it is also good that our leaders should be one. There should be an unbreakable folklore when it comes to transition of power of our political leaders, and let the rational spirit be that folklore among our leaders. This spirit should dictate our leaders, and give them control over their appetite of thinking that they are better than their predecessors. To be a good leader does not mean to say bad things about your predecessor, but rather to say good things about him or her and embracing and implementing the good ideas the previous leader had. In so doing the country moves forward in terms of development for the reason that there is a succession of ideas on how to improve the State.

How can Malawi succeed as a country when leaders act according to their own understanding of leadership? No man is an island and our country can move forward if we understand that I am because we are. Malawi stands as it is today because of those leaders who have been here before us and they deserve to be respected and be crowned heroes of the State. But it seems that this is not the case in Malawi for we see a lot of our leaders standing on the podium saying many bad things about former leaders. And we see instances where development plans, which are good for the country, are shut down because they were put in place by the former leader. But if these development schemes are meant to benefit the majority of the population of Malawi, then why should someone with his or her rational spirit think of closing it down? Should it be closed because it was started by a different person?

Political games are played without Fifa rules and are the ones making Malawi to be moving nowhere in terms of development. We are confusing politics and development without knowing that these two are independent entities and that each has its own essence. For no matter how much government changes its colours, green, yellow, blue, orange then to blue again, development in the State should move forward in spite of different political slogans. Development should not be founded on politics, but rather should be based on the oneness of the people and the leaders.

—The author is a philosopher

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