I shall find time for Joyce Banda

The first time I got up-close to Joyce Banda was the day she was at her highest low. She arrived at Malemia Primary School ground in Domasi, Zomba, around 9:30 hours, almost drawn, to cast her vote.

Flanked by the usual security pomp, her caring husband, Richard, and a string of relatives, JB—wearing a heavy and pale face without make ups—walked without the expected presidential candour as if weighed by emptiness.

Her eyes were withdrawn. Every time she dared a smile, it was feigned: while slipping her ballot paper into the box, one journalist, in search of her smile, was even forced to shout: ‘For the camera, Your Excellency!’

She gave a five minutes interview where, when asked if she would win, she responded: “It is up to Malawians to decide. I have done my best to serve Malawians. The country is better today than I found it”.

Even in the chorus of tenacious questions from local and international journalists, JB never stayed long. She left, in silence, the way she came.

I cannot, really, discern the reason JB was in low spirits when she came to cast her vote. The nearest speculation could be that she already knew of her imminent fall. But did she?

I am sure that her political team was thrown into sleepless nights after the credible Afrobarometer positioned her third on the race.

But now that the die is cast, her fears, I guess, are finally finding their way home.

What remains of JB, however, is a new chapter of her history.

Will she remain in politics? Or she will retire? The faster she settles to these pressing questions is critical in shaping how history will remember her.

I have, for years, known Joyce Banda as a two-faced person: an internationally acclaimed activist and a hard-core politician.

If truth be told, especially if you remove her two years as a president, JB managed, enviably, to use her two faces in aid of the most unfortunate in Malawi. In fact, even the worst of her critics can attest that JB, as an activist and partially as a politician, has changed more unfortuenate lives in history than most of the people who go on chimney tops to claim they have the welfare of the poor at heart.

JB is only politician who committed her life to the service of the most unfortunate even before she rose to become an MP in the 2009 elections.

Through her National Association of Business Women (Nabw), JB touched—including my mother— the lives of most mothers in the country. She was the beacon of hope.

Through her Joyce Banda Foundation, she has, and being continues, to support a number of unfortuenate girls through scholarships that has changed most lives.

In fact, it is through such initiatives that, in 1997, she won an international accolade, together with former leader of Mozambique Joachim Chisano, which saw her forming Hunger Project.

This is in contrast to a number of priviledged Malawians who live poshy and glamorous lives without sparing a thought for the underpriviledged.

That is why a long view of JB’s history unveils interesting human interest chapters that, if well told, could culminate into a powerful and quotable read.

However, the challenge with history is that it always tends to judge a person based on how they end.

JB’s political end, honestly speaking, is not that encouraging. Her two years in power has been mostly defined by unprecedented levels of public looting and increased arrogance and defiance of every voice of reason regarding calls of reality check.

However, any assessment of JB’s two year should be mindful of certain realities that made her presidency challenging.

She inherited a falling nation and this is unarguable. Every sector of the economy was drifting into collapse.

To mean, she had two years to heal it by, among others, taking unpopular and biting yet important measures; at the same time she had to start selling herself in preparation for Tripartite Elections.

Being boxed into such a fix of managing a falling economy at the same time preparing for elections is not an easy situation for any politician.

It was a difficult two years. Getting over it demanded developing a grand strategy. Unfortunately, she took on board a team that, in all intents and purposes, just wanted to loot public coffers.

The result, as we all can see, has been tragic. Her campaign was almost running like a relief organisation distributing petty things that could be left to a constituency governor. She got so engrossed in distributions than building structures of her party.

Equally baffling was how she carried the entire party to these distributions. As a result, her entire campaign revolved around her name, not the party. The tragedy of this is evident in how those who were herher Cabinet have fallen.

But I believe the two years of her presidency are too peripheral to define her story. That is why as she begins another life, I will always find time to celebrate her story even when nobody would.

Here is my message to JB: Could, we as Malawians, found a lady as you? Good-bye to JB, the last of all. Malawi will never produce your equal. Friends, I owe more joy in telling her story than you will see me silent. I will shall find time to celebrate you, JB; I shall find the time.