Indifference is a death threat

Art lovers, my job is not without life-threatening risks.

Absurdly, two recycled comedians from a State-sponsored ensemble found it newsworthy to reveal that President Joyce Banda is inundated by death threats. Isn’t her job naturally dangerous? Is that not why tax-payers pay her scary security system? By the way, did the honorable humorists want nation to cry or laugh or pity her?

Playwright William Shakespeare calls death a necessary end—inescapable. Therefore, every breath is death threat and we are all bound to die like bestselling musician Geoffrey Zigoma whom we buried on Monday.

But Zigoma’s demise also confirms that the opposite of life is not death but indifference. Far from politics and hypocrisy, I refuse to wax lyrical about Zigoma’s uniqueness just because he is dead. What does it matter?

Zigoma was already succumbing to deepening indifference when he told me cancer was killing him. That time, he wanted about K1 million for expert treatment abroad since local hospitals could only afford an overdose of chemotherapy. Like Stonald Lungu’s death, Zigoma’s dilemma worrisomely mirrored government’s indifference to cancer patients and their right to life. Remarkably, liquidated Air Malawi donated an air ticket, musicians held fundraising gigs and the deceased was spotted performing in churches and pubs to stay alive.

During a midnight encounter at The Palace (Masm House) in Blantyre, the deceased Zigoma left the dance floor crammed, quaking and sweaty as he struggled with agony to replicate the sweet-sounding voice that made his Ndathera Pano a bestseller in 2000. Sadly, the revelers could not sacrifice their booze when well-wishers started soliciting some change for his treatment.

Maybe we are all indifferent. But it is State-sanctioned insincerity, not good will, which was bafflingly glaring when Vice President Khumbo Kachali and Minister of Tourism and Culture Moses Kunkuyu led Malawians in welcoming Zigoma’s remains from India on Sunday.

Government’s hypocrisy and propagandistic habit of hijacking celebrities’ funerals for political gains is a DEATH THREAT to artists.

Looking back, unheeded media portrayals of Zigoma’s fatal pain by far outweighs President Banda’s quirky cry for safety.

Looking forward, government must learn to act faster instead of waiting to burry more Zigomas and Lungus.