Nothing Personal

“If a Communicator is guided by wishful thinking and pays attention only to positive feedback, that feedback will do more harm than good” this very sound piece of advice comes from the book Using Communication Theory by Sven Windahl, Benno Signitzer with Jean T Olson (Second Edition).  The same book also talks about a phenomenon in Communication referred to as Professionalization which simply means the tendency by professional communication practitioners to build their work on professional skills and knowledge, believing that there is no need to talk to people in the public, because based on their contacts, the public does not know what is going on. This, the book concludes, may accurately be referred to as professional arrogance.

This reminded me of developments back home and in particular the socio-economic challenges that our country Malawi, is going through. For the record, Malawi is not the only country that is going through serious economic and social challenges in the world at the moment. Obviously in saying this, I am not trying to suggest that it is any less painful.

It would be an act of gross naivety and outright insulting to the intelligent people of Malawi to suggest that they do not understand the problem, because I have sat in forums where ordinary folks have eloquently articulated the challenges the country is facing. The problem in my view is that our leadership since the advent of multiparty democracy have been blinded by greed, corruption and cronyism, running the country as a personal estate not paying attention to the strategic interests of the country. If this is not the case however, I will argue that maybe we have consistently elected the most inept and incompetent individuals to run the affairs of our beautiful country. 18 years down the line, we still have the humiliating tag of “the impoverished southern African country” as the opening description of the country by foreign media.

I know that right now some people are already asking themselves “kodi ameneyu ndi wachipani chanji?” (Which political party does he belong to?) as if this means anything in a country where parties are not based on any ideological foundations but rather personalities. Where a party can sponsor someone to become President and then he/she can conveniently dump it into the opposition and literary create a ruling party from scratch; Where a Party becomes a ruling party, simply by virtue of its owner ascending to the presidency.  As long as Malawi continues on the current trajectory of worshiping political leaders, the challenges facing the country will NEVER go away.

Because of our legacy of envy, we are very quick to celebrate failure. It is as if when a leader has failed the country, some of us in some twisted way have triumphed. When Bakili Muluzi was finishing his second term of office, people were so fed up with him that many would have rejoiced to see him spend some time behind bars. The same thing happened to Bingu, at the time he died (May his soul rest in peace) many people were so fed up with “him” that the idea of waiting for 2014 was one that many people were not prepared to tolerate. Now, almost a year into President Joyce Banda’s tenure there are many people who are, to put it lightly ‘dissatisfied with her’ and are wishing for some other individual whoever that may be, to come in and somehow make all the problems go away with some magic wand I suppose.

The only problem I have with our leaders is that they have failed to provide leadership not necessarily to take away all the challenges, but to reform a system that clearly is so impotent that we have to bank our hopes on Civil Societies and foreign governments to provide checks and balances in our system. I do not believe that any one individual has answers to all our problems, but I am definitely sure that the answers to the problems in Malawi will NEVER come from anywhere except Malawi itself but certain things have to change.

If we want a cabinet that is not just full of hero worshipers clamoring to outdo each other in public rallies, then we better take away this ridiculous idea that a President should just hire and fire cabinet ministers at will and justify it with a pack of malarkey about powers conferred by the constitution. These are people who have families to take care of in a country where unemployment is so rampant that being employed is viewed as some sort of miracle. Therefore if these people’s livelihood is balanced on a tripod with the whims of a leader, then they will indeed worship that person and where will the checks and balances come from. What I am saying is, let us reform our systems to serve the needs of the country and not continue to perpetuate the legacy of one party system where Kamuzu is equal to Boma!

And by the way Presidential campaigns here in America have come and gone and I did not hear even once any mention of Malawi by any of the candidates and therefore this delusion that Americans or the British or the Chinese or some other foreign government or institution will solve the problems in Malawi today is nothing short of self-deception bordering on lunacy.