An American dream, a Chilima inquiry
July 24 2025
Dear Diary,
Greetings from the Munda wa Chitedze Farm where I relocated from the traumas and depressions of the hustle and bustle of your city.
We have been having tricky weather of late. Very cold evenings and mornings, and quite hot afternoons. This is good for weathering so that we have more soil for the chitedze crop to grow better.
As I write, I am just awakening from a dream. In my dream I saw a good friend of mine who passed away a couple of years ago.
He gave me a very beautiful box. He smiled. I took the box, and smiled back.
Trying to open the box was hard, but on it was inscribled, in gold, the words: Agoa.
In my furtive attempt to open the box, my deceased cracked in laughter. It was as if some laughing powder was sprayed on him. He cracked, cracked and cracked, noisily.
I woke up. Suddenly. The cracking was from the trees rubbing against the roof.
Strange things, dreams.
You see, the words I saw on that box, Agoa, reminded me of the African Growth and Opportunity Act. Here is that American initiative to deepen growth and investment in our lovely but disenfrachised continent.
It is then that I knew the dream brought me hope. A dead man giving you a gift, while laughing is inspiring. Some of you dream about your dead uncles chasing you through dark nights!
As I walk towards the greenhouse, I think of the opportunities that lie ahead under Agoa in America. But then, that will all depend on who takes the mantle come November 5 2024.
You see, things are moving too fast for a chitedze farmer like me to understand. One Thomas Matthews Crooks attempts to assassinate former president Donald Trump, who got the Republican nomination. In a swift turn of events, President Joe Biden drops his bid for a Democratic Party nomination, endorsing his vice Kamala Harris.
And while we are wondering whether America will now accept a fi rst woman president and before we finish looking at who she picks as a running mate if she gets the nomination, the complication becomes complicated.
Before our question of whether she would chose someone from the swing states, or someone who makes a firm stand on gun laws or yet someone else who would dig deeper in the pocket to oil her campaign, the director of the secret service Kimberly Cheatle resigns following pressure from lawmakers over lapses in security in Trump’s assassination attempt.
Dear Diary, you see, within a week, the don of the secret service has hung the boots.
That reminds me. Only recently, a memorial mass was held at Nsipe for former vice-president Saulos Chilima, 40 days after his death in a macabre and mysterious plane crash along eight others. Like I always say, the more we avoid a full inquiry into the crash, the more the questions will continue to roll in our hearts.
Dear Diary, there is no proper reason to skirt around this issue. Within five days after musician Evison Matafale’s death in 2001 then president Bakili Muluzi instituted a commission of inquiry into the death. Remember, once he got to power in 1994, Muluzi set up an inquiry into the death of the Mwanza four.
Dear Diary, you may be one of those pessimists who would say such inquiries yield nothing since lives are already lost. I beg to differ. Much as there was a missing link on who ordered police and security operatives to brutally murder the three ministers and an MP, the inquiry showed that what happened earlier at Thambani was not an accident.
Even more, much as the evidence was thin that Matafale was murdered, events leading to his death as uncovered by the inquiry showed that his arrest was harsh, his fate in police hands led to death as he had health issues.
Like it or not, Dear Diary, the Chikangawa 9 macabre deaths will be an issue in the 2025 general election, which will be launched on August 2.
The hope is that some sane parliamentarian will raise the question why there is no talk about an inquiry when the National Assembly starts deliberations from August 26 to September 20. If the legislature will choose to play a blind eye on this executive nonchalance, the peace will vanish from the Munda wa Chitedze Farm. Dear Diary, that American dream, is shrouded in the Chilima death inquiry. I light a candle to that.
