Ninth State of our Estate Report to Edward Chitsulo

Moya,

That dreaded season of the year is here again when we must give you a report on the state of our estate, your Malawi, the estate in which you wholeheartedly invested your effort to build. 

We dread this season because we still take seriously your threat that Sunday night at Black Box in the Republic of Kabula that should we ever fail to report to you annually you would emerge from yonder in the Nebula to wring our necks till we chocked unto death.

Moya, as David Livingstone’s people say, first things first.  Umunthu first.  Greetings first.  You will recall, Moya, those lessons your uncle Che Vakara and his cousin, Chief Likoswe, used to drum into our rebellious selves.  A person, Che Vakara would go, is munthu because of how that person treats and approaches others and respects traditions, such as greetings and courtesy.   Any person without these traits is a mere homo erectus, chilengiwa, and not munthu. 

Among the Sukwa or Lambya or  Ujeni in Chitipa munthu has to display his utu or unthu by finding out about the health status of everything, from spoons to shoes and everyone, from babies to great grandchildren and from chicken to cattle. 

So, Moya, we send greetings from our earthly abode to you and John Chilembwe, Ngwazi Kamuzu Banda, kaNgwazi Bingu wa Mutharika, the great Tito Banda, Kaulanda Nkosi, Cheulekeni Mita, Grey Mang’anda, Ralph Tenthani, ada Nga Mtafu, and your newest member, Charles Mkula. If you are fine, to quote Allan Namoko, ife kuno tikondwera.

Moya, Malawi, your estate is going through hard times, most of them man-made.  We say man-made because the persons that made the decisions were men.

We thought we had enough problems already but the men that matter decided to devalue the Malawi Kwacha, the currency you Chiradzuloans used to call Chilembwe. 

The bitter consequences of that devaluation are now biting extremely hard.  Some items and goods are available in shops but very few people can afford them. 

The road network is as bad as kaNgwazi Bingu wa Mutharika left it.  We hoped that the new administration would make us feel better for once with its road construction projects, Mega farms, and other projects but these have essentially stalled as a consequence of the devaluation of the Chilembwe.

Moya, we still have the anti-corruption bureau, the courts, the police, and the messengers. But serious cases of corruption that started at the same time as the current administration have not moved even a millimeter. That they will be completed by September next year is as impossible as being alive after passing through the sun. 

The Cashgate King was left to flee Malawi and nobody bothers to look for him.  Free man. The King of Cashgate is free.

Of course, there are small positive things that have happened. We have more traditional chiefs than before; more constituencies than before; more secondary schools and universities than before; more immaculate women and men than before; more babies than before, and more ways of getting married. Ever heard of marriage by reputation?

Moya, demographers claim that your great estate now hosts over 20 million live souls; which is five times the number of Malawians in 1964 and 20 times the national population recorded by the census of 1901.  That we are indeed over 20 million in Malawi is something we do not believe.  For whatever reason, the population is highly inflated.

Moya, the next major election is in September 2025. Moya Peter Arthur Mutharika (PAM) has changed his mind, after announcing in 2020 that he was retiring, and now believes he is the best choice for Malawi. The Tonsefe Alliance is split although nobody in the Alliance, except Simbi ya Moto’s son, Enoch, says so. It is clear from the Malawi Kongilesi Party (MKP) that Chakwera will not cede ‘candidature’ to Saulos Chilima because the agreement signed by the two and hidden from the public for four years does not oblige any party to follow it.

Subject to the conventions of the two party’s resolutions, says the signed agreement, Chilima may be the torch bearer for the Tonsefe Alliance. 

If the conventions do not endorse the agreement? How about the other Alliance members?  We also wonder, Moya.

Moya, the Bishops of the Catholic Church in Malawi, the people whose predecessors wrote the 1961 and 1992 Pastoral Letters asking for us, Malawians, to respect human life, have likened the current state of this great estate, your estate, to the Bagamoyo of the slave trade days.  As usual, some Malawians agree with them but others, like the Genuine Prof Dr Joyce Befu, MG and MEGA-1,  democratically disagree.

And that is the state of our estate nine years on.