Will the cycle ever stop?
Hon Folks, the rise of Joyce Banda, albeit by default following the death of Bingu wa Mutharika in April 2012, was an overnight global sensation.
It was a first in Malawi, a country which flopped on Millennium Development Goal (MDG) number 3, on gender—for a woman to become Head of State. In Africa, Banda was only second to Nobel Laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia.
Will Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma be the third woman president in Africa? The rumour mill pits the African Union (AU) chairperson and former South African Cabinet minister against millionaire and politician Cyril Ramaphosa for the next president of South Africa. But, should that happen, it’s a story for another day.
For now, only JB is what the southern African region has as proof of its readiness to have a woman at the pinnacle of power. And Malawi, which may not have much else to show for its progress (save perhaps for the fact that we are rated number six best English speaking country in Africa) is what there’s to thank for that.
We’ll toast to that albeit JB’s tenure lasted only two years, the shortest for a Malawian president ever!
The JB whiplash had a feel-good factor to it that lingered on past her term of office. CNN declared her it’s most inspiring woman politician of the year 2014—the year she had lost to APM. She was ahead of Sirleaf, another Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi and other prominent women politicians!
Again, this rekindles memories of the many other awards, invites and recognitions that came her way between 2012 and 2014. The folks at MBCtv, with a penchant for scouring through the diary of “the president of the day” for headline news, had it easy by monotonously talking about JB this, JB that every bulletin for two years.
If it wasn’t news about JB’s trips abroad, it was about her trips within Malawi—elevating a chief or distributing flour, cows, goats, motorbikes, etc. JB was an agile president who took the hackneyed phrase “reach out and touch” as a single important measure of political correctness.
No wonder she still doesn’t believe her loss in the 2014 polls was a true reflection of the will of the electorate. Just early in the week JB was in the news, demanding that APM should answer claims that DPP engaged someone to hack into the software used by Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) to manage the Tripartite Elections.
She had invested so much of her time and resources into the 2014 presidential polls to trail APM and MCP’s Lazarus Chakwera with a paltry 20.2 percent of the votes.
But that may be her personal worry. That worry that is as much ours as it is hers is the possibility of JB, whose spin-doctors rebranded as “Amai” (Mother of the nation) ending up in handcuffs. ACB does not even hide the fact that the probe is now exploring her role in the infamous Cashgate as some of the culprits are claiming all they got was a commission for money looted from the public coffers for the then ruling PP’s campaign for the 2014 polls.
JB was at the time in question heading both the government and PP and at least two of the culprits—businessperson and former PP executive member Osward Lutepo and former Principal Secretary for Tourism Treza Senzani have dragged her name into the Cashgate saga, a claim she vehemently denies.
What is depressing is that should JB, who has already spent more than a year away from home like a fugitive, end up in the doc for Cashgate, it means there being so far no past President who goes into retirement without having to worry about answering for short-changing poor Malawians.
First President, Kamuzu Banda, ended up in the dock where he lost much of the State property he claimed was his. Second President, Bakili Muluzi, has a K1.7 billion (about $2.6million) fraud case still in the courts. Third President, Bingu wa Mutharika, died in office but with a question mark on what is estimated to be K61 billion worth of assets amassed in the eight years he was in power still unresolved. Now, this!
As a citizen of this country, I yearn for the time I shall have a leader who retires with a clean record and mingles with us freely. It’s not healthy to see a once most powerful person on the land ending up in handcuffs and humiliation.n Feedback: thebackbencher2015@gmail.com
