Notes From The Gutter

Help delayed is help denied

Trouble is on the road again in the Southern Region. Mob killings of ‘blood sucking’ suspects are enjoying an unchallenged sprout, and I’m not surprised!

By Tuesday, just in a space of under a week, six lives had been gruesomely cut short, all at a rumour and ice-cold belief that takes strangers, for blood suckers.

As if the cost, in the currency of blood, is not enough, development projects stand to stall as some organisations are reported to have already ‘temporarily’withdrawn their workforce for fear of their staff being killed.

Which organisation would not bet worried?Imagine your son, daughter, nephew or employee bidding you goodbye on their way out onan errand within the areas awash with killings of suspected blood suckers.

What would give you peace to enjoy a cup of tea when yourrelative or employee is amid the cold blooded societies?The answers are yours to keep.

The issue of blood suckers is not new. It is just as old as authorities have failed to resolve it. And all the time, we have lived to learn that the rumour about blood suckers has no basis.

At a glance, one therefore condemns the societies for being barbaric and less civilized, much more the case when not even one soul has come in the open to share a convincing narrative of evidence of an ordeal with or by the said bloodsuckers.

But thepeople in the affected areas are not stupid or lifeless artefacts lacking wisdom. They live in societies that have seen too much already. Once beaten, twice shy.

We are still fresh from a climax of attacks on people with albinism. This began like a rumour peddled by ‘insane’ villagers. You might also remember Nachipanti of Ndirande in Blantyre and want to agree with me there is everything wrong about our country’s style of resolving incidents such as the present one.

Nachipantiterrorised houses, clawing into his victims’ heads with metal bars and whatever it was.His story too began like a rumourbut ended in a multiple tragedy. His ring of terror circled any spot it wished, such as houses and secondary school dormitories. Those lucky to escape his net were left with scars and deformities to carry for the rest of their lives.

Like I said, the recent case has no evidence of any blood sucking. Yes, that is true. But it is our society’s way of thinking and responding to matters that is to blame. It has allowed people to grow hysterical.

There is so much history to justify that ‘many’ cases that start out like a rumour end up real. The villagers are then ‘innocently’ not taking any chances.

The real problem is that top cadre intervention seems ‘strategically’ slow or absent. Poor societies then feel left to run their own ‘state administration.’

In an ideal Republic, such cold blooded killings can never troll for a week without heads rolling in commandcentres. Corrective communication too would flood radios, television, newspapers and even open air meetings.

But we are Malawian and our approach to matters is casual.

Now, at the tail of this ‘blood suckers’ saga is the long standing impression the world will have about our nation; ‘we are so slow to act.’

And here now are organisations acting before we do — by pulling out of development projects.

By the way, what will ever be done to the other school of blood suckers that terrorised the Gonapamuhanya celebrations in the North a few days ago? Sometimes and somehow, ones feels that violence in Malawi has a blessing from ‘above!’n

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