Malawians need new mindset—Chakwera

President Lazarus Chakwera says Malawians need to embrace a transformative mindset to achieve meaningful change as a substandard mindset has led to broken systems.

Speaking at Bingu International Convention Centre in Lilongwe on Thursday when he presided over the launch of the Theological Society of Malawi, he said every Malawian knows what services and infrastructure the country needs to progress, but they do not seem aware of the role they can play to have and sustain the same.

Said Chakwera: “The broken healthcare system, the substandard services, and products that cannot compete on the world market did not create themselves. They were created by citizens with a substandard mindset.

“What is not so obvious to everyone, which is actually the most important thing, is that if Malawi is going to have all these new things we have appetite for, then the first thing Malawi is to have is a new kind of citizen.”

He said the systems in were broken by people who should now take an active role in fixing them.

“Malawi needs a people that are transformed and are able to look at the world differently in order to effect and sustain change in the country,” stressed the President.

Speaking earlier, the society’s board chairperson the Reverend Timothy Nyasulu said Malawi is rich with scholars that can help transform the country.

He said: “It has been discovered that Malawi is rich with good scholars with all high intellectual capabilities and in the next few years a number of topics will have been covered that will need to be taken on board to implement national development agenda.”

Meanwhile, governance commentators have said the mindset change can be impactful if it should start from the leadership.

In an interview, University of Malawi associate professor of political science Boniface Dulani said there is no question about the need for mindset change in the country, but that the leadership needs to lead by example.

He said since the campaign period, the Tonse Alliance has been making promises which have not been fulfilled, thus eroding people’s confidence in the government.

Said Dulani: “There are so many things which this government is doing in the same old way as previous governments yet they promised that they would do them differently. Some of these things may not even require change of laws for them to be implemented.”

However, he said people also need to change their mindset and not look at themselves as beneficiaries of development but rather think of what they can also do for government.

Speaking in a separate interview, another governance commentator Makhumbo Munthali said government is not doing enough to inspire confidence in the people.

He said: “The leadership is not doing enough in areas such as the fight against corruption where one can say that, in some ways, it is shielding the corrupt. Such things cannot inspire the citizens to rally behind it and indeed change their mindsets.”

During the event, Chakwera also launched a book titled Decolonising the Theological Curriculum in an Online Age which was later auctioned and he made the highest bid of K2 million for the copy.

Nyasulu said the book comprises presentations on different topics made during a theological conference at the University of Livingstonia in 2021.

The book was edited by Felix Chimera Nyika, who is chairperson of the society’s executive committee.

The newly-launched Theological Society of Malawi seeks to consolidate efforts among theologians in addressing challenges that affect the country.

Historically, theologians have contributed to the country’s political change through various ways, notably the Pastoral Letter of the Roman Catholic Bishops which helped to change the country’s political system of government from single party to multiparty democracy.

Chakwera is also a theologian who served in the Malawi Assemblies of God before quitting the pulpit in 2013 to join frontline politics.