Hungry Maula prisoners mere pawns

It is quite likely that the Maula Prison incident in which the opposition DPP officials were refused permission to donate some bags of maize to starving prisoners will pass as just another act through which a ruling party is allowed to flex its muscles and get away with it while the rest of us can only helplessly watch.

But to me, the incident has another deeper meaning and it is how, as a country, we have allowed partisan, dirty and stinking politics to define our way of life and to even come between what is inherently good and outright evil.

Here are prisoners living in the most horrible and torrid of conditions. In fact, those who rear pigs for slaughter ( my father used to keep them, so I know what I am talking about), provide better living space and conditions in a sty than what the State does to those incarcerated.

Among other horrendous conditions, they eat once a day and as if this was not enough, the State fails to provide even for this single meal at Maula Prison because it cannot pay suppliers for the foodstuffs.

An opposition party wants to help and it is stopped in its tracks and by all standards you would think this is the most unreasonable thing to do and you would be right.

Various reasons can be advanced but the truth is politics, the hackneyed dirty politics, is the cause.

In fact, apart from the cashgate and politicians such as Bingu wa Mutharika using politics to amass obscene wealth, it is another indication showing how it is damaging our way of life because politicians want to define everything about it as an all important variable in the equation.

These are the facts. DPP would not admit but much as their intention was to feed starving lock-aways, they wanted to milk as much political capital from this incident as possible, hence the blue branded pick-ups that carried the maize. Doing it quietly, as most benefactors on New Year Day’s do, was never an option.

And so, DPP and Peter Mutharika wanted to make a New Year statement to PP and voters: You are failing to feed prisoners and we can do it better. This is all understandable, after all prisoners vote in Malawi.

On the other hand, the PP government could not allow it and they have used their political muscle to stop it all.

Actually, the jobs of Maula Prison officer-in-charge and that of the Commis-sioner of Prisons Kennedy Nkhoma were on the line, if they had accepted the DPP donation of food to feed innocent prisoners.

The lopsided reasoning is also very simple and it is this: We are a ruling party with all the mighty power bestowed on us and so, all things tagged good and for the good of society, must be doled out by us and us only when we want to do it.

It must be only President Joyce Banda, for example, who must give out maize, build houses for the poor and sit with them in their dirty shacks, all relayed  by the passive, obedient and comatose media for a good measure.

You would think DPP is all upset by the fact that their donation has been refused, but hell no. They are actually happy although they would not say it.

They have achieved their intention of squeezing as much political capital and publicity from the incident as possible.

DPP’s Peter Mutharika, as portrayed in the media, has looked as a God-sent revelling in the biblical ‘ I was in prison and you visited me’ dogma, only that he was blocked by the unholy of the unholy personified by the PP cadres and their mercenaries, bent on protecting their jobs in the Malawi Prison Service.

This is how politics has damaged Malawi. Politicians practise politics not as an end in itself, to serve Malawians, but a mere means to an end to serve themselves. Anything outside this template is frowned upon and, if you are a ruling party, must be stopped.

All of us, including people locked away in prisons, are mere pawns in that game. That, to me, is what the Maula Prison incident, represents.

I will end with my usual mantra: Unless Malawians quickly engage in a crash course meant to take back our country from politicians who practise self-service brand of politics, we can as well forget that the general election this year will deliver anything meaningful that will impact positively on our lives.

I wish you a belated happy and prosperous New Year. Let us get on with it.