In his song ‘Is This Freedom?’ from the 2001 album Soul Taker, the late South African reggae icon Lucky Dube raises a question many politicians prefer to avoid once in office.
While it critiques the white minority rule in apartheid South Africa and the post-apartheid political order that followed, the message in the song goes beyond South Africa and remains central to political debates across Africa, particularly in countries where political change has failed to translate into improved living conditions for ordinary citizens.
At the centre of this song stands an elderly woman worn down by decades of poverty and political oppression. On April 27 1994—the day South Africans participated in the first non-racial democratic elections marking the official end of apartheid, she turned to her son. She asked quietly but devastatingly: “Is this the end of our suffering? Is this freedom?”
In that moment, Dube offers Africa a mirror, suggesting that freedom can be proclaimed from political podiums without ever being fully experienced by the people it is meant to serve. He closes with the line “our lives are on the line again”.
With the notable exception of Mandela, who voluntarily stepped down in 1999 after one five-year term in office, South Africa’s politics have been marked by recurring governance challenges, including corruption scandals, high youth unemployment, sluggish economic growth, deepening inequalities, overstretched public services and declining trust in public institutions.
Unfortunately, today, those same realities are testing the ANC’s promises of political freedom, social justice and shared prosperity made more than three decades ago. It is, therefore, no surprise that Dube’s central question is stubbornly urgent.
Can political freedom, on its own, end human suffering?
This question brings us home.
On Monday, the Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority (Mera) imposed a sharp fuel price hike, pushing petrol to K4 965 per litre from K3 499 while diesel rose to K4 945 from K3 500. In a country already stretched thin by high inflation, a weakening Kwacha currency and poor incomes, the hike was a heavy blow to millions of households already struggling to keep their heads above flooding economic waters.
Mera says the increase is a correction aimed at restoring the Automatic Pricing Mechanism (APM) abandoned around 2022 by the previous Malawi Congress Party (MCP) regime in favour of a fixed pricing system later plagued by endless procurement scandals.
Under the APM system, prices are adjusted when costs move beyond a five percent band. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) argues that the price increase is the cumulative result of years of policy decisions that prioritised short-term political comfort over long-term economic sustainability. It adds that the APM threshold was breached nearly three years ago under the MCP administration; hence, this week’s hike is a long-delayed reckoning presided over by ex-president Lazarus Chakwera and his party lieutenants and less a sudden shock.
Since 2023, oil marketing companies absorbed losses, foreign exchange reserves were drained to subsidise imports, fuel levies meant for road maintenance and rural electrification went unpaid and strategic fuel reserves in Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu—designed to cushion the country against supply shocks—remained depleted, reducing national preparedness.
Now our bill has arrived, and it is too much to bear. What Malawians are paying at filling stations today is the compounded cost of poor decision-making by those we entrusted to lead us in the past.
For households already battling shrinking incomes, rising food prices and unreliable public services, the timing could not be worse. Yet pretending otherwise would only deepen the crisis.
So, the real test now is not whether fuel prices have been realigned, but whether President Peter Mutharika, Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Decentralisation Joseph Mwanamvekha and the DPP administration have the credibility, discipline and compassion to manage the aftermath of the hike. Probably, Malawians will endure sacrifice if they can see purpose, fairness and protection for the most vulnerable.
But without that, the DPP’s economic logic may quickly collapse into widespread public disillusionment.
Still, the question is, will this pain lead us anywhere better? Until this administration convincingly answers that, fuel adjustments will remain a referendum on governance and the meaning of freedom itself.
