The country we would like

What sort of country should we like to have? Alas, there are no more empty, uninhabited spaces to which we can migrate and found something like a New Nyasaland or New Malawi. The better country we dream of must be created out of the one we already have.

Thousands of North and West Africans try to enter Europe through Libya and Italy. They drown in the Mediterranean Sea. They know Europeans do not invite them, do not need them, and still they go on and intrude.

More times than we can remember, people from the horn of Africa have tried to go to South Africa through Malawi. Some have drowned in Africa’s third great lake. Those who have entered Malawi illegally have been arrested, fined and deported. Yet others still come. Will they now stop trekking southwards having heard about xenophobia in South Africa? Will Malawians stop venturing south having seen their compatriots forced to return empty-handed from a South Africa they had known for ages as a land of opportunity for the indigenous and foreigners alike? I doubt if they will stop going  there. They did not learn a lesson from the attacks of 2008, all this because Malawi is a land of problems.

It is said that when an individual has problems it means he is alive. Only people in the graveyard have no problems. Similarly, a country that has no problems exists only on the South and North poles and on the moon. That country is not inhabited by human beings.

Some problems of Malawi are easy to identify. It has a large population on limited land. Feeding this population is a problem compounded by floods. The population, unfortunately, grows at the rate that worried Thomas Malthus. We have to invent ways of increasing the means of subsistence at a rate faster than the demographic growth rate.

Since the great drought and famine of 1949, Malawi has known periods of other great droughts alternating with floods that recreate the days of the biblical Noah. No permanent solution has been found for these natural disasters. Still solutions must be found. These disasters make life short, brutal and unpleasant.

Half a century ago, Malawi had one of the best civil services on the continent. Now with the recent Cashgate, what is there to boast about a public service that has lost its efficiency and integrity. There has never been on average a year when a junior civil servant such as a cashier has not been convicted of pilferage. But it has been unusual to hear of departmental head or a controller of the ministerial budget misappropriating public funds to build a private house. This has happened by male and female heads alike.

To try and reduce Malawi’s problems we must start at the top of the pecking order. Malawi needs a president modelled on France’s Charles de Gaulle, Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew. I adore these political giants because they transformed their countries. In trying to bring a new lease to the lives of their nations, they were abused as dictators. But by the time they stepped down from the thrones, their countries had become wealthier and regained international respect.

A great people and a great nation create each other. They are like a chicken and an egg, making one wondering which begins. Unless a people are sensible and magnanimous enough to recognise a messiah when he arrives, he will not succeed in his mission. Freedom to criticise the policies and programmes of a leader must be preserved, but not abused. To assume that those who criticise always know better than those they criticise is nonsense. Some midgets throw mud on a giant simply to attract attention to themselves.

Thatcher, De Gaulle and Lee had clear visions of what they wanted for their countries and were prepared to court unpopularity, to brave through rough seas to take their countries to new heights.

The President of Malawi has embarked on reform programmes for the public services, including the parastatals. Reforms invariably alienate those who have been benefitting from the status quo. All I can do is to remind our top citizens that the hallmark of a functioning democracy is that there is a circulation of elites. People who are no longer performing should not hold on to their positions, those lower down more deserving should be granted upward mobility. Beware of rent-seekers, sycophants. A true friend cannot be a flatterer at the same time. This was realised by a 16th century Italian prince Caesar Borgia who prayed: “God protect me from my friends, I can defend myself against my enemies.”

During Malawi’s first 30 years of independence, Malawi was classified as one of the poorest 10, but never as the poorest. That was the period of dictatorship. During the multiparty democracy, Malawi’s position on the world economic ladder had declined. Where have things gone wrong?

It is not enough to ask chief executives to suggest better ways of running parastatals? The opinion of independent technocrats is advisable.