Tractorgate: Why we failed to attend Steve Chimombo’s funeral

We, Sheikh Jean-Philippe LePoisson, SC (RTD), Abiti Joyce Befu, Most Paramount (MP) Native Authority Mandela, and I, the Mohashoi, failed to attend the burial ceremony of Professor Steve Chimombo, our teacher, our mentor, our folk poet, our novelist, our short story writer, our incisive academic, our literary critic, our literary theoretician, our educationist, our journalist, our friend, and the guru of Malawian fiction writing.

Let it be said for the records that without the encouragement and leadership of Steve Chimombo at Chancellor College’s Writers Workshop in the 1980s and the ardent participation therein of Anthony Nazombe, Patrick O’Malley, Uledi Kamanga, Zangaphe Chizeze, Fedelis Edge Kanyongolo, Thom Likambale, Benedicto Wokoma Atani Malunga, Garton Kamchedzera, Dick Chagwamnjira, Jessie Sagawa, Bentry Kayira, Alfred Ntonga, and Raiti Sam Mtamba, I, your Mohashoi, would not have had the courage to write the Unsung Song in those harsh and oppressive years.

We wish we were there in Zomba to personally condole and console Professor Moira Chimombo, an academic and educationist in her own right, but more importantly a bottom-up heroine of the struggle against rural poverty, hunger, spread of HIV and Aids amongst the youth, and promoter of early childhood education and youth development, and dignity of rural and illiterate grandmothers in Malawi and Southern Africa. To appreciate her work, pass by Safe Africa in Zomba.

We failed because we were busy combing the rural and urban areas during this farming season to trace the deployment of the 71 tractors the Malawi government’s ministry of agriculture gave, sorry, sold to its ‘qualifying and deserving’ farmers without following standard procedures of disposing off of government motor vehicles.

We regret to inform you that, so far, we have seen only one farm tractor at work in Balaka, and one maize sheller—and plenty of DPP flags fluttering, of course—in Ntcheu. So we still have work ahead of us to find the remaining 143 maize shellers and 170 tractors. A luta continua next week, inshallah.

We failed because we were busy examining parliamentary archives to find out which law authorised the DPP government to borrow money on our behalf and buy the ill-fated tractors and maize shellers. Lawyers, genuine counsels, have informed us that any loan entered into without approval of Parliament is illegal. We are still looking for the law that authorised the Mutharika government to borrow money on our behalf. Otherwise, soon we will be talking about tractor loangate.

We failed because we were trying to find out why agriculture, farming, and farmer civil society organisations have been so quiet about tractorgate. We are bothered that the Farmers Union of Malawi (FUM) is dead quiet yet it claims to represent famers’ interests. The Civil Society Agriculture Network (Cisanet) is equally diamond-stone silent about tractorgate yet it claims to be an agriculture policy advocate promoting, inter alia, agricultural extension policy, agricultural mechanisation policy, and seed policy. The National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi (Nasfam) has maintained surprising graveyard silence despite its boasting to be the organisation that speaks for and unites smallholder farmers, the very people whose toil to feed us the mishandled tractors were meant to alleviate.

We failed because we were busy examining why the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture has not been interested in the tractor issue yet its mandate is to ensure issues of agriculture are properly handled in parliament.

At least we now know who does not bother much about agricultural progress in Malawi. We hope you understand why we failed to attend Professor Steve Benard Miles Chimombo’s burial in Zomba last Tuesday. Rest in peace father of Ulimbaso theory. You ran your part of life’s relay race, it is up to us to continue your legacy. In particular, your voluminous book draft on Investigative Journalism in Malawi, which we had the honour to review, needs to be published one day. Some day. n