Will MBC save us?
It is easier for the guzzlers to adjust downwards the family budget for relish or clothes than it is to cut down on the beers that satisfy the costly appetite for alcohol.
After all, most bars and clubs have a good sound system with a nice variety of music while DStv comes by the full bouquet. Some places have pool tables over which clients religiously bend for hours, knocking the balls in as they enjoy their swigs. What does the family back home fall back on when our radio stations or State television heavily task themselves to broadcasting and rebroadcasting presidential diaries?
I am glad there seems to be efforts to get things back on track after ages of making state radio and television tools of indoctrination. We need deliberate policies to make state media the best first stop shop for news and entertainment.
For instance, how nice it is to have Lucius Banda back on air.
His return to these airwaves gives people hope for better content and dwarfs the behaviour of overzealous minds that ‘censored’ him out for verses critical of an equally overzealous political regime.
We might only have known about Lucius because of his massive presence in the pool of artists but one believes the oppression had extended to many other casualties. Arts, especially music, are often under the undue scrutiny of political powers.
Have you ever asked yourself why?
It’s because music is endowed with a power to open people’s eyes.
Unfortunately, most political systems would want to lord it over their ignorant subjects. This is why musicians with a significant power of analysis are enemies of the state.
Such bad leadership will try to suppress artists who try to liberate their audiences. It is however unfortunate that artists also play a part in creating monsters of governments. The new regime has a lot of work to do rebuffing such sell-outs.
