A story is often told about a passenger that got on a bus in Mzuzu, paid a fare for Lilongwe. When they got to Lilongwe, the passenger refused to get off the bus and paid an extra fare to Dedza. Arriving in Dedza, the conductor was agitated because the passenger refused to get off the bus, he stayed put, paid an extra fare to Ntcheu and then an extra one to Blantyre.
On the final leg to Blantyre, the whole saga revealed itself. Having ran out of fortune at Zalewa Road block, unlike any of the others since Mzuzu on this journey, the law enforcement agencies insisted that everyone alight from the bus for a thorough inspection.
Our passenger stayed put and the law enforcement was having none of his tricks. When he was finally forced out of the seat; lo and behold the reasons why the passenger resisted getting off the bus blew in the face of everyone. The passenger had thoroughly soiled themselves and at the point of just standing, a swarm of flies engulfed the seat where the “dirty soils” were.
The passenger was thoroughly dejected with shame and a dilapidated broken spirit. He was cast out of the bus to the boos and hoos of the vendors and all the by-standers at Zalewa Trading Centre. He lost his dignity and brought shame on his lot.
As the bus moved on to the city of Blantyre, most of the passengers reflected melancholically on the sad story of the humiliated passenger. Then they remembered that this passenger having gotten on the bus in Mzuzu, he immediately went in an orgy of gluttony of feasting, boozing and gobbling every piece of oxygen in the bus and along the way. He bought and eat every piece of food along the way and gobbled every litter of liquor in sight at every stop. Then for some time, he went into a deep slumber of inactivity, probably constipated with too much graze and blacked out with excessive liquor and in the deadly combination of these vices, his muscles gave up and all he could do was to relieve himself on board.
When he sobered up, he discovered the calamity that had happened, thanks to his excesses. Then came his determination to get to the very end of the bus journey where in the comfort of only the driver and conductor, he could hopefully alight with limited reputational disaster.
Dictatorships who choose to remain and die in power reveal a trend typically motivated not by the cunning dishonourable guise that they peddle of having unfinished projects /business nor the more obnoxious excuse of there being nobody competent enough to take over from them; what cheek and what if they kicked the bucket? Do they suppose life will stop?
No! The real reason for such decadence for seeking a fourth term beyond the decency of two terms agreed by society is because the leadership, as we know it, is probably sitting on real rotten eggs and hope that by sitting put, they can musk the stench of their filth.
Unfortunately, any rot and the stench there from can never be masked forever. Somehow, noses have no fences, in due course the stinking will become too unbearable, the neighborhood will say enough is enough. So, as with the passenger in the forgoing lore, sooner than later this passenger sitting on rotten eggs will be thrown out of the office in the old forest town in Limbe.
One is tempted to make a potent parallel of the above lore and the developments in Malawian football where the incumbent is going for a fourth term even after announcing at Sunbird Nkopola Lodge in Mangochi last year that they had done enough and packing bags to go and “farm”.
Of course, no one believed them, anyway, because they have made so many such promises and have kept none. That is simply how much them folk operate and cares not about credibility and having a reputation that creates confidence with partners and stakeholders. That is why very few serious-minded sponsors have stepped forward to invest in Malawian football lately.
Sponsors cannot trust the leadership. Even the few that are there are just waiting to see if the incumbent stays put. They will do what McDonald’s, Coke, Visa and Budweiser have threatened to do in the west. But knowing what apparently is at stake, the incumbent leadership will rather remain put and bring down Malawi football together with them rather than leave honourably, unless of course Malawians gang up to rid themselves of the menace of this scourge.
