Season of madness

A woman had a daughter who was a fool.

She implored all the gods to put some sense into her, and the girl often heard her mother praying in this way.

One day, they went to their farm.

The girl left her mother and wandered into the fields. When she saw a man forcing himself on a goat, she asked: “What are you doing?”

The man said: “I am putting some sense into it.”

The girl remembered her mother’s prayers and said: “Put some sense into me too!”

The man refused to screw her because, as he said: “There is nothing more ungrateful than a woman.”

The girl said: “Don’t worry on that account, sir! My mother will be very grateful to you and will pay you whatever you want since she is always praying for me to get some sense.”

So the man deflowered her.

The girl was overjoyed and ran to tell her mother with the good news.

“Mother,” she said, “I’ve got some sense now!”

The mother exclaimed: “The gods have answered my prayers!”

The daughter replied: “Indeed, they have, mother!”

The mother then asked: “And how did you get some sense, my child?”

The girl explained.

When the mother heard her daughter’s explanation, she said: “My child, you have lost what sense you had to being with!”

And the many problems Malawi is grappling with arise from that the country is cleanly in the spell of madness.

It is evident that the hunger situation in Malawi is dire. There are no adequate stocks of maize in Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc) depots and some people are queuing for madeya where available while others are eating wild foods to survive.

Perhaps, Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development Allan Chiyembekeza was unrealistic when he recently insisted on rhetoric that only creates more statistics—that there is enough maize to feed hungry Malawians until harvesting time.

Insanity is looking into the abyss and denying it is there, they say.

The country is staggering under the weight of multifarious challenges such as lack of direct budgetary support and soaring public debt, hence government’s failure to provide adequate public services to its citizenry.

Failure to see a solution to the challenges and in frantic desperation to cling to power, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government has focused every bit of its energy on God’s providence—Lake Malawi.

Malawians must be living in some dreamland of gross naivety to believe that the country will benefit from this irremediable journey of leaving this life-support system for Malawi’s millions to the vagaries of nondescript entities to try out their prospecting skills in oil and gas exploration and exploitation—with far greater consequences that will haunt and scar the psyche and face of this country for hundreds of future generations long after we will have exposed our lake to oil pollution and polluted the environment, all drinkable water, plants and animals.

Malawi, for example, does not have a single inter-generational investment or infrastructure project to point at from the Kayelekera Uranium Mine proceeds.

Again, the country continues reaping the sour fruits of the folly of entrusting tried-and-found-wanting individuals consumed by primaeval greed and questionable affinity to the country with the ruling hoping they will behave differently and in the best interests of all Malawians.

So some 30 civil society organisations (CSOs) and activists recently busied themselves on Malawi Broadcasting Corporation media platforms gibbering wreck that very few sensible Malawians would have been impressed with.

A replay of Bingu wa Mutharika’s DPP psychosis, particularly at the time the former president was reeking of arrogance.

But the DPP second coming has brought yet again a season of madness!n