Malawi’s politician publishes autobiography

Malawi politician and economist Vincent Mapesi Gondwe has trod over what most politicians fail to do by publishing an autobiography.

Titled To Strive for African Greatness, the 239 paged-book is a story of how a young village boy survived the pulls of tradition, which entangled most of his peers, and managed to get first class education that saw him—after a stint with the University of Malawi—entering the corridors of the world’s first class universities like Massachusetts and Harvard in the USA, Reading and London in the UK.

 “The book is about a people emerging from slavery, but continuing to be victims of socio-political ills that must be overcome. The problems include widespread strife, dictatorships, corruption, rising crime rates, rampant disease, starvation, economic disparity and mushrooming slums,” said Gondwe.

 He added that the African, more than any other race in the world, should strive to make significant contributions towards perfecting ‘our life as human beings’.

 Said Gondwe who writes mostly about his heightened awareness nurtured during secondary school and university years spent in the US: “This book portrays a dream that will awaken and nourish similar dreams in young people. I began my dream in the early 1950s, with the introduction of western formal education, something that stirred higher aspirations.”

 The book—made stronger by use of the narrator’s pictures and emotional boyhood experience—was published by Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Company in the US.

A Harvard-trained economist, Gondwe has been an operations manager in the private sector, a teacher and a politician, and was elected to Parliament from 1996 to 2004.