It is time for the ‘middle-class’ to revolt!

Why, if I may ask, was the wealth which Dr Kamuzu Banda primitively accumulated when he ruled turned into a public property in the form of Press Trust?

The reason, you may note, is not different from the one the PP government is advancing today in its quest to turn Bingu wa Mutharika’s Bineth Trust into a public trust.

I am saying the reason is not different from the one Peter Mulamba, former Admarc deputy manager, who, after ACB intensified investigations on Admarc, disappeared from the country in 2004 and, till date, he is still a fugitive.

Please, what I am saying is that the reason is nothing different from the one Bakili Muluzi is still in court today answering the K1.7 billion case.

What I am saying is that the reason is nothing different from the reason we are today entangled in the web of cash-gate revelations of K90 billion (US$243 243 243), K61 billion (US$164 864 864) and K20 billion (US$54 054 054) dating back, so far, to 2009.

To mean, as they are making huge allowances through pointing fingers in Parliament, all of them—MCP, UDF and its twins, DPP and PP—have no MORAL AUTHORITY to utter a word on the cash-gate.

They are all a bunch of looters—a potent symbol of Africa’s post-colonial vampire state. From the Babangidas and Obotes of Nigeria, the Bokassa of Central Africa Republic, through the Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire to our own Kamuzu, Africa’s post-colonial state has largely been defined by leaders bent on primitive accumulation.

Of course, with the winds of democratisation in the early 90s, some countries—for instance, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda and Zambia—managed to break away from the vampire state. Today, some of these countries have become a symbol of Africa’s hope.

Not in Malawi. Our post-democracy governments have so much in common with the pre-democracy government.

In fact, in areas of public finance, UDF and its twins, DPP and PP, have perhaps been the worst. MCP, being a centralised state which centralised corruption as well, few had a hand in the public purse. Democracy decentralised corruption. Eventually, in the three post-democracy regimes, Malawi has lost billions through a conspiracy of politicians, senior civil servants and their relations.

Through abusing the privilege of appointing, presidents have planted their ‘cronies’ in key positions of public influence, a well calculated move not just to gain themselves and their allies unlimited access to public resources but also to be shielded in the event that the law wants to catch up with them.

That is why I urge Malawians not to trust a word out of all the investigations currently underway on the cash-gate.  They will yield nothing, and there is a reason.

How do you investigate a country’s finance system when all you do is fire a minister who neither signs cheques nor gives administrative orders, and leave controlling officers, who makes all the directives, still in the system? Quite rubbish!

How does Mrs Joyce Banda, a politician who has worked in all the previous governments as a senior Cabinet minister, wait not just to become a president but for a budget director to be shot to raise an alarm for corruption she knew has been happening since way back?

In fact, even gestures from Mrs Banda’s government appear quite disturbing. Apart from new ministers ‘talking tough’ on blab la bla, we hear of establishing a new court—as if there are not courts—to manage corruptions cases. We hear they want to come up with a Forfeiture Act, yet Edge Kanyongolo, a legal expert, says the country already has mechanism for forfeiting property deemed to have been obtained illegally.

All these gestures, to me, sound like a government that is only trying to be seen to be doing something.  Basiiiitu!

There is one thing, however, we should not forget as Malawians. This cash-gate thing involves a number of senior politicians and civil servants from DPP and PP. These people, though they appear to tussle in public, are all the same. They meet and strategise on how to fool us when we all go to sleep.

Not only that. If DPP managed to sit on the findings of the audit report which revealed flaws of IFMIS, what would stop PP from doing the same? In fact, most of the politicians and senior civil servants who suppressed the report during DPP ear are also in PP government today.

If anything, the PP, just to appear concerned, will only target culprits from DPP and drag them to court. But let us not forget that there are a number of cases in court involving politicians that are yet to be concluded.

All this, ladies and gentlemen, adds up to one thing: MCP, UDF, DPP and PP are all thieves whose major difference is the level of looting. Don’t believe the rhetoric that they are ‘reformed’ or their ‘change agendas’. They do not differ on principle. I have read their ways, their constitutions and their manifestos. There is hardly a fundamental difference among them.

Because the state, with our undeveloped private sector, is a major source of money and business, all they want power for has nothing to do with principles of national development as enshrined in the Constitution. Rather, to gain unlimited access to public resources and share the loot. PERIOD!

This is why the future of Malawi hardly rests in this crop of post-colonial vampires of politicians. They need to be wiped out for good so that we start a rethink of this country. The challenge, however, is that they can hardly be wiped out through a ballot. These politicians, through their piecemeal policies like cheap fertilisers, appeal more to the majority of voters who are poor and gullible. They are always promised of a vote.

This is where we need the middle class—the young and educated and exposed sons and daughters of Malawi to revolt against the old and plant a new government that will be afraid of its people. But how can they do this?

To be continued…