We are the hollow men. We are the stuffed men. These lines from T.S Elliot’s 1925 poem The Hollow Men struck deep in me on Thursday after listening to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) media conference held in Lilongwe.
As the three sat—Nicholas Dausi, Kondwani Nankhumwa and Jean Kalilani—I saw in them a spirit that T.S Elliot saw in the post-First World War Europe, the spirit that moved him to write the poem.
Elliot saw a spiritually empty Europe, a continent battered to the bone due to a war that took away the material world that defined their greed.
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
But what does the poem have to do with DPP?
Well, the poem captures intelligently the image of emptiness at the heart of a troubled people. And this is the depth of emptiness I saw in Dausi’s militant speech defending Bingu’s alleged K61 billion wealth, the emptiness I saw in the two others.
In its wisdom, the DPP presented two cases.
One, they faulted the media, especially ‘cheque-book’ journalists from Daily Times and Weekend Nation, for revealing Mutharika’s K61 billion wealth as presented in an affidavit by Jeremiah Chihana without a voice of the family.
Two, they attacked Chihana, who they argue harbours personal hatred against Mutharika, for claiming that Mutharika was worth K61 without evidence.
In fact, without clearly saying what they will do, they have, in their anger, given Chihana and the two papers five days to produce evidence.
After issuing those threats, Dausi went further to say that “the conduct of Mr. Yeremiah Chihana, The Daily Times and Weekend Nation in publishing these false allegations is a cruel hoax on the Malawi people by the PP government.”
So the two papers and Chihana are conspiring with government to fool Malawians?
If this is true, then God should bless DPP for playing a critical watchdog role. But because I don’t believe that it is true, I will stick only to what I know here.
What I know, and I can prove before five days elapses, is that The Daily Times gave, through showing not telling, all the details of Bingu’s wealth as presented in Chihana’s affidavit.
Now if DPP is convinced that what Chihana presented were mere speculations not revelations, it means they know the real truth. Now if they know the real truth, then the way out was not to convene a rumbling press conference to vent their anger on the media and Mr Chihana.
Rather, they should have just presented the truth, through showing not venting anger, about Bingu’s wealth. Through that, the ‘cheque-book journalist’ from Daily Times and Weekend Nation could have quoted the figures and presented them, through showing not telling, to the public for judgment.
Now when Mr Dausi only attacks those with evidence without presenting his evidence, the whole thing, to me, amounts to nothing but a group of people, in the words of Elliot, leaning together with headpiece filled with straw.
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
I don’t hate DPP. But I hate a number of things they inflicted on Malawians when they ruled. Some of such things—primitive accumulation of wealth from public resources—is coming back, and it is haunting them.
The way out, Dausi, is not to waste time being defensive to eruptions of your party’s rotten past by advancing funny conspiracy theories. Rather, just counter such eruptions with facts. Don’t sit on them if you have them.
Otherwise, DPP, if firefighting the past continues, is slowly turning into a hollow party caught between the desire and the spasm.
And do you know how such parties end?
T.S Elliot said that they ‘End not with a bang but a whimper’.
