It is time to mourn not celebrate

July 3, 2014

I am not going to start my entry today by blaming the DPP government for blowing K200 million of taxpayers’ money organising a whole shebang to celebrate the country’s 50th Independence Anniversary tomorrow.

This government is going with the flow of the past empty celebratory moods that have been engulfing the country in July, largely pushed by greedy consumerism.

This government is simply following the cheating of the masses that has been going on in the past 50 years that we need to dine and wine in celebration of our independence when the reality on the ground is that there is nothing to celebrate as the years gone by have merely gone to waste. Here is why.

Celebration presupposes there is something to celebrate by way of achievements. The question that we should be asking ourselves is: Apart from the self rule from the British, has this nation gone forward in terms of human development worth going on the mountain top for and shout with joy that we have reached the Promised Land?

Those who think we should celebrate point to the fact that Malawi now has some notable infrastructure such as roads, airport, university and imposing buildings most of them largely built during MCP’s 31-year rule.

They also mention the fact that some of us have also developed at a personal level. Malawi now has a large number of highly educated and civilised citizens that can stick their heads and stand to be counted at any international forum.

I entirely agree to all this but I also know that a large portion of the population, in fact the majority, who mostly live in the rural areas (though they are also there in abundance in the urban) have been left behind completely.

As I am writing this, after all these years of self-governance, some Malawians are still struggling to meet even the most basic needs a decent human being requires for survival and to live with dignity.

All development reports or indices portray Malawi as a country of filthy poverty with a population that struggles on daily basis to keep souls and bodies together and women and children have borne the brunt of it all.

What is the benefit of 50 years of indepen-dence when some families go to bed hungry and cannot access clothing, housing and medical care?

Even in cities, the cost of the basic needs basket is ever increasing.

For me, this is time to mourn as celebrating the country’s 50th independence is a fairly unpleasant and careless elitism that suggest that we give up on a whole swathe of our fellow citizens who have nothing to celebrate as their lives are full of misery while we are dining and wining.

The quick fire answer could be that it is also their fault but is this entirely true? With the way this country has been run for the past 50 years, can someone say every citizen and every child was given a chance to excel?

No country in the world has ever achieved equality of outcome but some have tried to achieve equality of opportunity and it is all that matters.

In the final analysis, the future of this country in the next 50 years lies in the kind of leadership that it will have.

Until such a time when this nation will have revolutionary leadership that will use the abundant national resources at its disposal for the benefit of all its citizens, poverty and gnashing of teeth, hell on earth for many, will continue and there will still be no cause of celebration.

Worse still, foreigners will still have a say on how this country should be run as if we have a say on how theirs is managed. It is all because our leaders have been happy to use their money for the past fifty years.

There is simply no cause of celebration. It is time to mourn our fate.