Private citizens can cause the economy to tick

 As the year drew to a close, many cross over functions were organised by different religious groups in the country. Shepherd Bushiri stood out as having organised, yet again, a particularly successful cross over rally, with many participants drawn from outside Malawi, mainly from South Africa. They jam packed the expansive Auction Holdings floor.

In the few days leading to New Year ’ s eve, Lilongwe bound planes were oversubscribed and all the major hotels in Lilongwe were filled to capacity. Bushiri’s cross over function was not just a huge success for the ECG Church that he leads but for the country’s economy as well. The hordes of foreigners that poured in brought with them forex and spent it here. In his own right, Bushiri is a source of forex for Malawi.

Some people think that forex generation is the preserve of Government and by extension that what Bushiri, as a private citizen, did should have been done by Government instead. I do not agree, not in the least. On the contrary, we should all aspire to be like Bushiri and bring in forex into the country. Just as we, private citizens, use up loads of forex through the importation of all manner of goods from abroad, we should also do what we can to generate some.

Bushiri joins the elite club of people who are able to generate so much forex for their countries, outdoing politicians. Very few people in Malawi will have heard of Michael Manley or Edward Seaga of Jamaica. One was the Prime Minister and the other the Leader of Opposition at the time that the Wailers were rising to stardom in that country. The only thing that can be remembered about these politicians is that they were perpetually at each other’s neck, throwing the tiny Caribbean country into a perpetual state of turmoil. Street gun fights in Kingston and other major cities were prevalent in those days. The Wailers, on the other hand, became famous because of a music genre they had developed – reggae. Their records were selling throughout the world, bringing in a good bunch of forex. Even after they had split and began solo careers as Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, they continued to sell reggae to the global audience. If Michael Manley or Edward Seaga did anything, individually or together, to generate forex for Jamaica, it paled into insignificance compared to what the Wailers achieved.

It is a fallacy for anybody to think that they can pin their hopes on politicians as providers of forex. Private citizens, like Bushiri, Marley, Tosh or Wailer can do a much better job at it. Politicians should not get in the way of such individuals, even though they may not agree with what they do or proclaim. As long as they do not break the law, they should be left alone. Silencing them would be tantamount to killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

The Wailers were not liked by some people, much less by politicians, because of the outspokenness of the individuals in the group. Peter Tosh was probably the most outspoken of them all. He used to call the system (the government) the “shit-stem” and the Prime Minister the “Crime Minister”, for example.

After his appearance at Bob Marley’s One Love Concert in Kingston in 1978, at which concert he lambasted Michael Manley and Edward Seaga for their failure to enact laws that decriminalised the use of marijuana, the state machinery was unleashed to get Peter Tosh. A few months after the concert, he was picked up by the police and taken to a police station, where he was severely beaten. They clearly intended to kill him as they only left him when he pretended to be dead. In the process, they left him with a cracked skull.

I t w a s a f t e r t h i s unfortunate incident that he composed the song titled “Wanted Dread and Alive”. I got to know about Peter Tosh because a friend brought an album by the same title from the UK. This and other albums by the same artist were selling globally and, therefore, generating forex for Jamaica. The picture was even bigger when you factor ed in other reggae artists like the indomitable Bob Marley, the mellow Bunny Wailer and a host of other greats in the likes of Gregory Isaacs, Burning Spear, Joseph Hill, Dennis Brown, yes, the list is endless.

A search within our contemporary society will produce a number of individuals with the potential to become like Bushiri. These should be nurtured rather than silenced. The economy of Malawi depends on them much more than it does on politicians