Mandela: there must be one like him
Honourable Folks, for reasons beyond my control, I didn’t have an early opportunity to pay tribute to Nelson Mandela, my idol. Being who he was, a lot has been said and written in the past two weeks so much that it’s now hard to conjure up something fresh to say about him
Still, in the run-up to the 2014 elections— the 5th time we’ll be choosing a Malawian president by universal suffrage— I’d give kudos to Mandela for being a rare proof that I’m not insane to look for a president who puts the best interests of the nation above his or her personal interests.
In a country where the Constitution stipulates that “all legal and political authority of the State derives from the people of Malawi and shall only be exercised…to serve and protect their interests”, it may appear obvious that those we entrust with sovereign authority would, by the dictates of the supreme law of the land, prioritise our interests.
But in practice, putting the interests of the nation above personal or partisan interests has proved to be a tall order. Our leaders tend to pay lip service to such a commitment. Power corrupts them gradually to the extent that there comes a time when the only question that matters most in the exercise of sovereign authority is “what’s in it for me?”
We have witnessed the raping of the Constitution and our laws to suit the personal agenda of a president. Although succession has largely been peaceful, presidents do not hesitate to stir up mud during election times to secure longevity of their own tenure or impose on the electorate a successor.
Our presidents have cherished wrong values while in office—polishing, scooping and worshipping the notion of prerogative mainly for its inherent dictatorial nuances; creating a larger-than-the-economy government for the sake of creating as many lucrative jobs as possible in the public sector for their stooges; and meddling in the awarding of government contracts to ensure their cronies benefit while those perceived to be sympathetic to the opposition, lose out.
Above all, our presidents maybe on the verge of bankruptcy as they are assuming office, but they would soon ensure no one is richer than them even if it means achieving that by pushing the economy down on its knees.
Such is the miserable story of leadership in Malawi. Coincidentally, they all have made a big mountain of an honorary degree, calling themselves Doctor so and so or Professor so and so. Mandela had amassed 50 honorary doctorate degrees and yet neither he nor his spin doctors bothered to tell people he was anything other than their dear Madiba!
He was the most loved leader of his time and the first democratic president of the strongest economy and most powerful country in Africa—South Africa—but the last thing on his mind was overstaying his welcome in office, abusing the enormous power he had or stashing public funds in his pockets.
Mandela nearly lost his life for fighting apartheid, a system that rank-ordered people according to race, with whites at the top, blacks at the bottom and coloureds and Asians in between. He believed that all people are equal and should be given equal opportunities by the State.
When he assumed power, he could have exacted revenge on the champions and beneficiaries of apartheid. Instead, he welcomed into democratic South Africa people of all races including those that jailed him for 27 years and sent many of his kind to the gallows or exile. He argued that he did not fight apartheid to replace white supremacy with black supremacy. Mandela wanted a South Africa and a world in which all people are equal.
It was a stand that estranged him to the radicals among his own people but it became a firm foundation for post-apartheid South Africa. Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma and whoever comes after Zuma would try to address the issue of economic empowerment of victims of apartheid from that firm platform. Without it, any government in South Africa would have been like Zimbabwe of the recent past, distributing poverty, not wealth. But the rainbow nation would also have had blood red as its dominant colour.
If such a pragmatic and selfless leader emerged in South Africa, there’s no good reason why Malawi shouldn’t have its own leader of the Mandela calibre. That’s why I shall keep on searching despite the fact that we haven’t had one even half as good as Mandela since we started searching before independence in 1964.
