People’s Tribunal

My sister is too close to my man

Dear judge Mbadwa,

I was surprised that your court is no longer dispensing injunctions as if it were some aspirin meant to provide relief for some legal headaches.

It has suddenly gone quiet on the injunctions front and the people who rushed to your chamber on every flimsy case to seek relief have now got cold feet for reasons we can only speculate about.

Has somebody been prematurely retired? We don’t want to surmise that most learned counsels are still smarting from the whatsapp tsunami that shook the integrity of our profession to the core.

My Lord, I can submit that every profession has some soiled linen that they wouldn’t want the neighbour to see and that should comfort everyone that life has to go on regardless.

The worrying thing though is that when everyone can see through the soiled nappies behind those honourable gowns, it becomes difficult to please citizens that real justice is being served in Nyasaland.

I digressed a lot. But that development should not stop me from seeking the indulgence of the court on the unfair criticism Mapuya received for travelling with 10 Native Authorities (N/As) to Northern Rhodesia where he went to attend a 40th summit of the Common Madness for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa).

My Lord, the plain truth is that elections are around the corner and as a government that is keen on maintaining our grip on power, we cannot take chances.

We need chiefs more than the opposition needs a movement that would excite neutrals into registering to vote in the forthcoming elections.

The N/As will play a crucial role in intimidating our political opponents and in ensuring that their subjects support the government of the day; hence, they have to be pampered every now and then.

My Lord, our detractors were talking about us abusing public funds in funding the native authorities’ trip to Northern Rhodesia.

But were we left with any choice? No My Lord. By now it should be clear that government business in Nyasaland is defined by how much taxpayers’ money you can waste on a few people of interest to consolidate your power.

Of course, officially we were talking about the need for the chiefs to learn how they would foster regional integration through such a trip, but don’t buy that crap.

My Lord, you and I know that native authorities are deemed custodians of culture and they can lose their identity the moment we encourage them to integrate; hence, they can no longer keep custody of the culture.

We feel the criticism of Mapuya is unfair because this is not the first time that we have used public funds to pamper chiefs, which means there is precedent. Why can’t the civil society and the opposition accept the principle of precedent which your courts respect?

My Lord, the Nyasa citizenry has been docile through and through. They like to criticise and cannot take action and we believe they should leave us alone to plan another landslide peacefully because previous attempts at attacking this government have spectacularly failed.

Do you need evidence on that? We have a file of petitions which have been ignored and the issues will never be addressed.

Sorry, I had to write this long-winded letter of intent, asking you to subpoena the CSOs for being disrespectful to the chiefs and Mapuya. Can that happen?

Regards,

Nikolie Douse, spokesperson

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