Malawi needs mindset transplant

When a head of State, barely a week after her country’s major donors announced a freeze in budgetary support following disappointment over the looting of billions of public funds by her government, her ruling party officials and some businesspeople, openly says “people keep on telling me to stop travelling, but I want to tell you that I will never stop coming to visit you,” one has to wonder what she is on about.

This is exactly what President Joyce Banda, who is also a presidential candidate for her People’s Party (PP) in the 2014 Tripartite Elections, on 14 November 2013 told the nation when she defied one of the ‘expenditure control measures’ unveiled earlier by her newly appointed Finance Minister Maxwell Mkwezalamba and travelled to Ntchisi to do a district commissioner’s and a party regional chair’s work respectively—to elevate chiefs and welcome into her PP defectors.

At a press briefing in Lilongwe, Mkwezalamba had on the previous day announced suspension of both local and foreign travels by government officers, including the President.

He said the suspension is one of the expenditure controls and accounting measures for the 2013/14 financial year by the government in line with current economic conditions and the need to improve on management of public funds, adding the only trips government would allow are those that are critical or full-funded by other partners.

Of course, the well-read economist did not specify how the public would monitor the controls and evaluate the criticality of the trips as well as determine their financiers. And that is a major cause for worry as evidenced by the trip of the most senior government official—Banda—to Ntchisi.

But one need not expend a lot of energy on Banda’s logic puzzle.

Psychologists have been documenting since 1960s that humans are bad at reasoning. It is not just that humans follow their emotions so often. No, even when they intend to deploy the full force of their rational faculties, they are often as ineffectual as eunuchs at an orgy.

History is indeed interesting. There are times when humanity seems to be running in circles with no clear sense of headway.

Looking at the history of Malawi, a country that 49 years after independence has failed to consider national economic and political matters with the eyes of an adult at 50, the President’s unconcealed arrogance and flawed reasoning portrayed at the Ntchisi ceremony is just a rehearse of absolutism and indifference of past regimes’ leadership entrenched by a society that is mentally ill and can only be cured for the disorder by a complete mentality transplant.

As a result, first, the sad story of letting the reins of power into the hands of visionless and predatory personalities still lingers.

For instance, all our post-one-party leaders have ever boldly worn on their foreheads ‘second-hand’ doctorate degrees when they should have hung those in their offices and paid them no further attention, a tacit admission by these leaders that they fall far short of meeting the requirements for ascendancy to the high office of presidency.

No wonder Banda, although the Capital Hill cashgate took place right under her nose, has refused to own up to the misconduct.

Instead, she and her PP administration have elected to lace the same with absurd terms such as ‘breakthrough’, and fashion or maybe fund campaign/propaganda-tailored stories/speeches aimed at deflecting the nation’s attention away from her pedestrian leadership that has seen over K20 billion being looted from the public purse since she ascended the throne in April 2012.

Yet the needful should have been the President to swallow her pride and acknowledge that the country is in a crisis that requires concerted efforts by all stakeholders to resolve; consequently, see reason and cut the unnecessary trips such as the Ntchisi one to save the little public money that the ‘thieves’ have left for the country to survive on.

Banda’s administration of late has been anxious to expose the maladministration of the previous administrations such that her government opted to keep it ‘under wraps’, but is eventually forced to release it as a rebuttal to accusations of wrongdoing when the cashgate is eventually inadvertently discovered.

However, no amount of such propaganda will exonerate PP government from the blame. Rather, admitting an error in this situation is a small price Banda and her disciples can pay to regain reputation.

Laurence Peter said: “There is no stigma attached to recognising a bad decision in time to install a better one.”

In fact, madness is one staring into the abyss and denying it is there.

Second, the culture of the majority of the citizenry failing to see any connection between public looted resources and their horrifying tax returns or very few considering themselves as serious taxpayers in any identifiable manner whatsoever or the majority of the citizenry just not seeing any connection between the quality of public service delivery and the balance books of available resources is still haunting the nation.

Touching on that, according to Mahatma Gandhi’s seven deadly sins, the country is infested with some businesspeople and civil servants gaining wealth without doing any work; luxury-loving leaders without conscience; some dexterous media practitioners and technocrats without ethics; some religious leaders, traditional leaders and civil society that cannot sacrifice their personal interests for the common good; some vastly knowledgeable academics and political analysts without character; some great scientists without humanity, and some unprincipled politicians who keep on changing colours.

Given this scenario, therefore, if Malawi is to have leadership that is matured in integrity and attuned to the requirements of the common good, and the citizenry that is the true midwives and eyes of democracy, it is imperative that it should undergo a mindset transplant.

Otherwise, the country will continue looking at its neighbours – Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique – with admiration while its leadership uses the meagre public resources to traverse the length and breadth of it merely to elevate chiefs or distribute cows without remorse.