Rising to the challenge, time for honest reflection

Some people look back and reflect on the road they have travelled in life.

Reflection is an important feature in most leadership training. It is an opportunity to look back at what has happened in almost every facet of one’s life and endeavours.

The value of reflection, just like its cousin introspection, is that it is a mirror to look into and learn from. Every life generates lessons and learning opportunities. The tragedy is that in the fury and thunder of getting on with the tasks at hand and the demands of the day, most leaders hardly find the time to take a deep breath and reflect.

Most leadership training worth respect put a premium on self-introspection and awareness. One cannot do the rituals of leadership development without reflection.

I have, therefore, taken to doing a lot of reflection lately, starting with the immediate past but as my introspection skills evolved, I have found myself reflecting not only on the present and the potential future, which is reverse reflection, but also going back into the past and relating the challenges of now and the future to the reflections of the past and seeking to see how the past can inform how the future can be managed for successful and positive outcomes.

In this journey, my reflections have led me to relate how the challenges of our society today can be tackled, especially when I have come across some painfully pessimistic friends who have said that the case of the Malawian society is a hopeless one. That nothing can be done to bring sanity, order and organisation to our community. That Malawi has far gone down the road to chaos and destruction where malice, vice and bigotry are deeply entrenched amidst us; they have become the official currency not the bad exceptions that have to be annihilated.

These arguments are strengthened by the fact that today in our society, it seems that being a malicious, destructive citizen is not only condoned, it is a privileged and protected status. That is how far down on the road to social insanity we have travelled. Interestingly this has happened in the last twenty years since we discarded the old one party state and brought in political pluralism.

Now it would be foolhardy and utter stupidity on the part of anyone’s to suggest that political pluralism has been a bad thing, far otherwise. It has been the best thing that could happen, except that just like many great projects, for the past 20 years since its inception, democracy has been totally and thoroughly hijacked by a clique of political thugs and hoodlums who have exploited it for their own selfish means to the extent that things have gotten so bad to a point where there is a silent majority of thoughts and opinions out there that says “maybe we got a rotten deal with this democracy”.

The answer is NO. We did not get a raw deal with democracy but we were naïve in 1993/94 to believe that we were going into the democratic dispensation with leaders that were benevolent and had put themselves forward for the good of our nation.

As the post 1994 era has revealed, we were completely daft to think and believe that way because these folks, most of them anyway, had no ideology or principle to be leaders; except that they were jobless and were looking for an occupation to enrich themselves and move from rags to riches, over night.

Today, the tragedy is that this clique of blood suckers has used any rule in the book to perpetuate their tenure in the system and have resisted any attempts by any sane voices to make corrections; including avoiding any changes to our constitution aimed at ensuring that we get either properly qualified leaders or we put clear and tangible safeguards to discipline and sanction errant leaders. They have rejected minimum education qualifications for people running for public office, even when a job of a gardener today demands some minimum qualifications.

At this very critical juncture in our nationhood, we can only pray that those with the clout to help and make Malawians chose a better future, the faith and church leaders, will clearly come out and tell the people of Malawi which political leaders to put into office come May 20 2014. The faith and church leaders are the only hope Malawi has left. They must do God’s work without fear, in line with their calling.