When a chief bruises a neighbour’s corpse
Dear judge Mbadwa,
You remember the time the Nyanja chiefs wrote you, claiming that they are the sixth in command; hence they need to be respected at all cost? You might not have forgotten how Paramount Chief Zundu led some Nyanja chiefs without names to organise a prompt press conference on State-sponsored Nyasaland Broadcasting Corporation just to attack Lazaro and his party.
You know Lazaro’s Male Chauvinist Pigs, as Tadeyo Mliyenda fondly calls them, has been a pain in the wrong place for chiefs and the People’s Demagogic Party (PDP).
Now Zundu was complaining that Lazaro was taking the shine off the chiefs of the Nyanja clan and as custodians of culture, they could not just sit and watch Lazaro castigating Mapuya.
We respected his right to massage the egos of his benefactors, the PDP, but as citizens of this country, what happened at the funeral of a respected Nyanja chief Thalauza in the week is despicable.
The self-acclaimed PDP apologist took his excesses too far at the funeral. In his attempt to please the PDP government, the chief literally bruised the body of Thalauza he should have been honouring at the time.
The Nyanjas have a saying that shows the folly of trying to over-prepare the body for burial, Nkonze nkonze ananyura maliro a eniake and Zundu literally bruised the body he came to bury.
Zundu with his penchant for attacking Lazaro, thought that the funeral had provided the rightful stage to tell the world of how blue his blood has become these days.
He came not to bury Thalauza but to dishonour him with pronouncements that Lazaro’s party will not rule Nyasaland again.
My Lord, since when did Zundu become a researcher or a member of the Institute of Podium Opinion to tell us who is ruling Malawi in 2019 or beyond?
Well, My Lord, we ask you to tell Zundu to reread the Chiefs Act to ensure that he sticks to the functions it prescribes. If he wants to lick the boots of Mapuya and his PDP or dance to his sad tunes, as it were, he should do that at his own convenience; not at funerals.
People who booed him at the funeral showed that the custodian of culture’s conduct dishonoured the dead. What penalties can we impose on him now?
We don’t want to ask him to pay some head of cattle or goats because he will collect the same from his subjects.
My Lord, those who disrespect the dead in communities are publicly ridiculed. It would be better if we take him to a stadium where people will be given an opportunity to boo him for two hours on end.
Waiting to hear from you,
The Thalauza clan and the citizens.
