Many of us are Chakuambas
wandanguluwe Chakuamba Phiri, the colourful political gladiator who strode the scene with trademark swagger and aplomb, is down on his wobbly knees. Not only is he unable to clothe and feed himself, he also can hardly afford a roof over his head. His arms are outstretched, pleading heartrendingly and waiting for good Samaritans to drop whatever crumbs and pennies they can part with to help him put a little food on the table.
For a man who scaled the giddy heights of public life to tumble listlessly down the precipice and endure the ignominy of destitution, it must be quite some humiliating fall. Here is the man who, in his prime and heyday, could afford to fly in a helicopter down the Lower Shire to show off to his folks that he belonged to the elite circle that holds and dispenses power. Here is the man who, only less than 10 years ago, could sulk over what he believed was an inferior ministerial vehicle that the late Bingu waMutharika offered him.
All that glitter is gone, replaced by an agonisingly empty begging bowl into which he is praying fervently that we drop our alms. Now, that is no laughing matter. You don’t laugh at people who are goners. You can only learn the lessons that their experiences offer to those who still have some miles to cover in this unforgiving journey of life.
Needless to say, there are many Chakuambas in the country we call home, people who believe that the world exists only today and tomorrow belongs to the gods inhabiting the distant mountains. You could be a Chakuamba. I could be one too.
For many of us, keeping a coin or two for the rainy day is some anathema that we shun like lice even when we have the extra penny that we could reserve for tomorrow. How many sports personalities of yesteryear do we see shuffling from door to door trying to squeeze pity from government, friends and family? How many former MPs and Cabinet ministers can afford to drive the shiny vehicles they used to possess at the pinnacle of their political power?
Even more tragically, this short-term thinking is the rod that lights the path of the people we choose to lead us. With the exception of Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda and the late Bingu, the other individuals who pretended to be our presidents were guided by the philosophy that tomorrow will never come. Government policies and programmes were designed to fill the stomach today and now, with strategic thinking and planning relegated to non-issues. Populism, patronage and cheap politics were their torch.
To some Malawians, the fact that the people we called dictators were the ones who showed the spine and vision necessary for national development gave credence to the notion that dictatorship, and not democracy, provides a durable and reliable framework for development. Whether this was only an accident or a statement of fact is a topic for another day in this never-ending academic and policy debate over whether regime type is the predominant determiner of development.
Beyond the debate over the development-democracy nexus lies our fragile and perilous existence as individuals and a collective, an existence marked by matters of the belly as typified by the likes of Chakuamba. It is a national calamity whose cure is nowhere in sight.
The other day, a friend and I bumped into a former commissioner general of the Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) in Blantyre. The man, clearly stripped of the trappings of office and brought down to earth to dine with us the commoners, labouredly disembarked from the jalopy that we called a minibus out of respect. His threadbare jacket was desperately crying out for a once-in-a-lifetime visit to the laundry. The shoes and shirt that did their best in the circumstances to cover his tortured body were a world away from the glandour of the Msonkho House, the symbol of comfort and riches that he once stood for.
Like him, a former Minister of Information during the Bakili Muluzi regime is so poverty-stricken that even a minibus fare is only a dream now. On one occasion a friend spotted the former minister walking home and had to give him some money to alleviate his suffering, if only for a fleeting moment. People such as him are littered all over our neighbourhoods, willing victims of the short-termism that defines us as a nation.
My last word is that in a country where tomorrow never exists, it is only inevitable that many of us are the walking wounded like Chakuamba. It only takes a small stumble for us to tumble into the gaping hole of destitution, privation and misery.
