With General Elections less than six months away, it is naïve to expect the country’s governing party, the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), not to smell politics as being behind the civil servants’ salary increments demonstrations. Conversely, we are once again in an era where the opposition will also use every opportunity to push government against the wall and make people rise against it. And the foregone conclusion when two or more sworn political adversaries meet is violence.
This is what we saw in the most recent foiled demonstrations by the Concerned Civil Servants in Lilongwe on Wednesday. The group organised demonstrations to protest the proposed 20 percent salary hike for the civil servants agreed by the Government Negotiating Team, Civil Servants Trade Union and Teachers Union of Malawi. As they prepared to deliver their petition to Parliament Building in the city, a group of about 200 men wearing masks and carrying weapons descended on the demonstrators who had gathered at the Area 18 National War Memorial. Four people are said to have been beaten and a lady was hacked in the head and left arm.
It is no brainer that the so-called Concerned Civil Servants were just a front for the opposition. The opposition have been behind so many other demonstrations by various opportunistic mercenary dobadobas clothed as human rights activists. In short, demonstrations long ceased to be the activism for their professed human rights causes. They are mercenary work. So while on the ground, people were seeing the Concerned Civil Servants whose planned ‘peaceful’ demonstrations was foiled by panga-wielding masked men, the real fighters were their political masters sitting comfortably in their air-conditioned offices. Those maimed are just political pawns in a fight of two or more Goliaths who ironically seep coffee and drink whisky together. Unfortunately, although we all know this, we pretend nothing of this kind is happening.
And if the demonstrations were really peaceful, the government and the governing party would not care a hoot. But as we all know, apart from the demonstrators chanting anti-government songs that incite violence, the demos are always hijacked by thieves and looters who break into shops and walk away with anything they can lay their hands on. This is the most dreaded aspect of the demonstrations. And it is the main reason no government wants them. The so-called peaceful demonstrations are not what they claim to be. They are always sold as innocuous activities, masked as an expression of people’s human right but they are knife-edged. They always end in tears. They disrupt economic activities and the victims are innocent businesspeople. Remember the late president Bingu wa Mutharika when things came to a head, he forced organisers of demonstrations to sign an agreement to make them liable in the event that the demos resulted in looting and damage to property.
So, those who have money will always make it do their dirty work. And the youth are the easiest target for this demonic work. Times are hard. Poverty pushes people to do weird and bizarre things.
Unfortunately, the lawlessness takes place under the watch of the Malawi Police Service, who are so compromised. When the hooded panga-wielding men do their act, the law-enforcers will just look away or pretend nothing is happening. At the very least, they will promise to investigate. But it ends there. This has been the case across all administrations. Police are in a state of capture.
So it is naïve to think that this violence will come to an end anytime soon. To the contrary, it will get worse as the D-Day draws closer. Call me a doomsayer, but it is what it is. However, this is not to say the situation is completely hopeless. Someone needs to step up and take the bull by the horns. That someone is President Lazarus Chakwera. The buck ends with him and he has all the powers and machinery at his disposal to do so.
