Dear Judge Mbadwa,
My Lord, I appear before this court today with a heart positively bursting with uncharacteristic joy. At last, the health sector of our beloved Nyasaland is thriving and what glorious proof we have been given.
Permit me to point to the unmistakable ripple effects of this medical renaissance.
If you will cast your eye on the government’s bold decision to impose a 20 percent import duty on amoxicillin capsules, paracetamol, artemether‑lumefantrine (LA), aspirin and ibuprofen, it can mean only one thing: our public health system, which was practically comatose yesterday, is now functioning like a well‑oiled machine. Malaria is no longer a killer.
In fact, this administration has overseen the eradication of Malaria; Malungo anatha and who needs LA anyway?
This inspired tax policy clearly signals that we no longer need to import life‑saving medicines from foreign lands. Why? Because our local pharmaceutical firms, which until recently struggled to produce a reliable tablet of Panado, have overnight transformed into sophisticated and world‑class factories ready to flood the market with high‑grade amoxicillin.
The local industry is thriving again, My Lord!
Indeed, I would stake my entire independent counsel fee that if you stroll into any public hospital pharmacy today you will find the shelves groaning under the weight of these crucial medications.
The dark days of a desperate doctor telling a broke patient to go and buy drugs at a private pharmacy are officially behind us. It is a utopia of abundance!
So let us dismiss, once and for all, the cynical mutterings of those unpatriotic critics who claim our government has developed a pathological obsession with taxation.
They argue that taxing imported medicine is counterproductive and will only drive healthcare costs into the stratosphere for the poorest citizens. What nonsense, My Lord!
Is this not the very same benevolent administration that has recently rescued Nyasas from the exhausting chore of eating local vegetables from Lizulu and native chickens from Chiradzulu? By graciously slashing the import duty on foreign poultry from 30 to 15 percent, and drastically reducing taxes on imported vegetables, our leaders have demonstrated a profound love for our palates. They want the common man to continue savouring the beautifully polished and genetically perfected vegetables from Jozi.
My Lord, safuna kudya masamba achizungu ndani? (who among us does not want imported greens?) We adore them: the unnaturally large carrots, the perfect potatoes, the gleaming onions and the imported garlic from the South.
Why should we harbour narrow‑minded, xenophobic tendencies by imposing heavy taxes on these innocent imports while protecting our own struggling farmers?
Our farmers, My Lord, can only improve if they face genuine competition. I acoedge the ingenuity of the policymaker on this one. Trust me, soon Nyasas will be exporting chickens and matimamati of international standard.
It would be slanderous to suggest, as some have, that we tax life‑saving malaria medication and antibiotics at 20 percent to prove our local pharmaceutical industry is thriving, while simultaneously slashing taxes on frozen chicken and South African onions to prove our tables are bountiful.
Clearly, My Lord, our government understands the proper order of priorities: medicine taxed as salad is subsidised.
I rest my case beneath the generous shade of a Jozi‑imported cabbage.
Respectfully submitted,
John Citizen
