Bottom Up

Cashgate: Where are civil society, academia?

We promised to stay in Balaka until we at least met or saw and met Mireilla, that songstress whose dreams of becoming a great female musician were thwarted by that bunch of jealous, selfish, agenda-less, and directionless feminists. We are, however, extremely satisfied that we saw Mireilla perform at the 35th anniversary celebration of the Alleluya Band at the Andiamo Campus in downtown Balaka.

Since we had nothing more to see, hear, feel, and taste in Balaka, we decided to leave Balaka for Ntcheu, Mangoni, where surnames in duplicate: Pengapenga, Tengatenga, Tokatoka, Thyangathyanga, Ng’ombeng’ombe, and even, Majamandamanda, abound.

We drove slowly past Balaka Market to avoid irking the camera traffic police at the centre. Before we arrived at Nsipe, I turned the Toyota Harriet left and drove southwards on a sturdy dirt road. We stopped at village headman Chipembere’s home.

We did not stay long in the village because we did not find the village headman. On our way back, we met three female farmers with hoes on their shoulders and pumpkins balanced on their heads with a dexterity uniquely African. They were on their way from their fields. I slowed down the vehicle to greet them. When I explained that we were Bottom-Up tourists and wanted to meet the village headman, one of the farmers remarked that she thought we had come to verify the lists for the Farm Input Fertiliser Subsidy (Fisp).

“No. Sorry. We have no idea about Fisp,” I said.

“How true is that the MCP president says he will stop the programme if he becomes State president?” The lady farmer asked, looking rather puzzled.

“Did he really say that?” I asked.

“We heard it from the radio,” another lady said.

“You know the Farm Input Subsidy Programme is expensive and not sustainable,” Sheikh Jean-Philippe LePoisson SC said in French. I translated.

“But do you realise that the same farm input subsidies help us farmers to realise more and better harvests? Stopping Fisp is killing us. Hospitals are free but there are no medicines. Primary schooling is free but there no notebooks. What do you think is our benefit from the government? Try to stop Fisp and we will not vote,” the third lady asked.

“What my friend here means is that since the fertilisers are bought from outside Malawi, the cost is high and we may not be able to continue buying them,” I said.

“Why is fertiliser bought from outside Malawi?” the first lady farmer asked.

“Because we don’t manufacture fertilisers in Malawi,” I replied.

“Why don’t we manufacture them here? We, from this village, and our brothers in Mulanje and Rumphi, have been experimenting with locally-manufactured fertilisers. The cabbage you see all year round along the highway is a product of our locally-manufactured fertilisers. We once asked the government to scale up our findings. No one has answered till today. So expensive or not, we need our fertiliser,” the second lady said.

“What type of fertiliser do you people make?” Native Authority Mandela inquired from the lady farmers.

“We make matumbo manure. Our brothers in Rumphi make mazolo pellet fertilisers,” the first lady answered.

We thanked them and promised to come back and meet the chief later. I was about to drive off when one of the lady farmers asked why civil society, academics, religious leaders and chiefs are so quiet about the massive cash theft that took place in Lilongwe.

“Does it mean that stealing is good? Why don’t civil society and academics come in? Are they satisfied when all the MCP expects is an apology from the President? Are they satisfied when the DPP says investigations should not extend to the remote past?

“Are they satisfied when the PP says we should forget about the cash theft and concentrate on development? And how do we develop when development money is stolen?” the third lady asked.

“What did you expect?” Native Authority Mandela asked

“Civil society and academics should come together and ask for the recovery of our stolen money,” the second lady explained adding, “the last time we met for our Farmers Club discussions, we agreed that if civil society and academics protest, we will join in.”

“Why don’t we wait until the current court cases are over?” I suggested.

“When will they be over?” Which case do the courts start with? Fomrer president Bakili Muluzi has a case. Bingu wa Mutharika’s children have a case. And then there are cases to do with Chasowa’s murder, treason,….” Abiti Joyce Befu, MG 66, said.

Related Articles

One Comment

  1. Seriously you reporters or columnists overrate yourselves. What Zeleza has written is trash and am going to sue him for billions for wasting my time and emotional injury. We readers are not stupid and whatever articles you put forth must be worthy our time, money and intellectual enrichment.

Check Also
Close
Back to top button