Greetings from the Munda wa Chitedze Farm where we relocated from the hustle and bustle of your city. Peace, and only peace reigns supreme here and we are happy about it.
It is not everyday that we board planes to travel to the Far East, so in our pursuit for better varieties of chitedze, we could not do otherwise but travel to China and get samples.
Dear Diary, to say the least, seeing life in Beijing confirms the topic we started last week about our moms being the best cooks! The theory is simple: When we eat only what our moms cook, we think they are the best of the best.
Because mother Malawi has cooked us the democracy dish, we have frowned upon communist states. This is well-documented in history. While still living in your concrete jungle, we had the pleasure of listening to Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda’s speech on communism to the Zomba Debate Society. In that 1965 presentation, the Ngwazi warned Malawians against falling into the temptation of embracing communism.
During his rule, communism was frowned upon, although our neighbours, like Mozambique, embraced the system. In fact, Zambia took on their own form of socialism masked as Zambian Humanism while Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere advocated Ujamaa, and their love for safari suits gave them away!
So, you see, the travel to China was literally a pilgrimage to get to the bottom of politicians and philosophers. It was a time to learn, unlearn and relearn from the great Sino men. Nothing can beat visiting the home village in Hunan Province of China’s first president Mao Zedong, mostly known as Chairman Mao. Nothing beats visiting the academy founded by one of the world’s greatest teachers and philosohpers, Confucius.
Travel is the best teacher.
From one of the lectures at the Research and Training Institute of the National Radio and Television Administration under the Ministry of Commerce, one professor gave a challenging question: Why should we have democracy on an empty stomach?
Dear Diary, at first,we felt offended by such a question, but come to think of it, has democracy really worked with poverty?
Walking around Beijing felt like being a character in George Orwell’s 1984. The cameras are all over the place, giving you the eerie feeling of ‘Big Brother is watching you’. On the roads, in buildings and even subways, the cameras monitor every movement you make. The only place we didn’t notice cameras were the bathrooms!
Even that professor had to comment on it: Privacy, for what?
The People’s Republic of China eliminated capitalism, feudalism, imperialism and other socio-political philosophies that hold some classes to be superior to others.
It is our view from the Munda wa Chitedze Farm that capitalism has not been in the best interest of our being. This democracy that came with it has brought serious challenges to our being.
Look, the system has made wider the gap between the poorest and the richest. Without strong institutions to guard democracy and tie it with development, lack of safety nets and unequal access to resources has left wealth to be concentrated among urban elites while rural communities remain marginalised. This is true even for the social sectors like education, health and commerce.
You see, with democracy and capitalism, the people surrounding the Munda wa Chitedze Farm are prone to exploitation for cheap labour. We must admit that unlike the many so-called investors around the farm who look for cheap labour and abuse the villagers, we offer better perks.
While we are at it, why would an investor from China come to Malawi and start raising chickens and selling manyowa a nkhuku? It is really queer!
But we digressed.
Before leaving the farm, it was our feeling that Beijing would be a denser concrete jungle than your metropole. We thought there would be no trees in China and if they were any, they would be plastic or synthetic as propelled in such movies.
But, we were mistaken. The two Chinese cities we visited, Beijing and Changsha, are so full of green spaces. They are green and clean. Democracy gave us the freedom to do what we like, to the point of depleting the environment beyond recognition. Our friends, the Chinese, show us development can co-exist with nature.
One other thing worth coping from China is how the political system has done away with divisions brought about by tribal tendencies. Malawi as a polarised State has known greater nepotism and tribalism with the coming of democracy. Look at how development is spread along tribal lines and how Malawians vote for presidential candidates coming from their regions or districts! Have the various tribal groupings that have mushroomed with the democratic tenets of freedom of association benefited us in any way?
From the time Bakili Muluzi took over leadership from Kamuzu, the poverty alleviation song has been sang even deeper, with no tangible results. At the time of her independence in 1949, China was just as poor as Malawi. But today, they are far ahead, and are actually competing with the United States of America as a super power.
While China has really acted on poverty alleviation over the years, our drive has only been talk, talk and more talk. With only policies and blueprints to fight poverty, the dream to alleviate it remains far-fetched since we lack strong governance which has led to heightened corruption, financial mismanagement and poor public services.
