This is national humiliation

Every time I hear Western countries reading the riot act to us and talking down our leaders in the light of the cashgate, I seethe with anger and rage.

You can imagine how I felt this week when donors operating under the banner of the Common Approach to Budget Support (Cabs), led by Britain, were at it again, telling government during a review meeting that much as they have noted progress in dealing with the crisis that has seen Capital Hill thieves siphoning huge sums of money from government account, there is still a way to go before they unlock their gates for suspended donor aid in budget support.

Needless to say this should be humiliating to any deeply proud Malawian who wishes his or her country well.

The way the donors talk and behave towards us, as if we were some idiots or schoolchildren who do not know what we are doing and being punished by a teacher in a stick-and-carrot fashion, is utterly embarrassing and downright patronising. It is not nice at all.

But when emotions finally give away to reason, I do understand donors. They all come from countries where accountability for taxpayers’ money is a cardinal rule in their operations unlike here where every Jim and Jack, by the mere fact that they are members of the ruling party, thinks they have a right to abuse money paid into Treasury by hard-pressed but hardworking Malawians.

At the end of the day, we must accept that representatives of donor countries are here to safeguard their countries’ self-interests and ensure that their taxpayers’ money is not abused by Malawian thieves but reaches the intended beneficiaries which are the poor people of Malawi.

It is my view, therefore, that the ultimate blame for the humiliation does not wholly lie with the donors but we, Malawians, starting from us the citizens to the leaders that have failed us since independence, almost 50 years- ago.

As citizens, we are too timid and have accepted the role of the donkey to be ridden by our leaders. We have worshipped leaders, starting from Kamuzu Banda, who was the worst, to the present day. And yes, we have done this even when we have known that the leaders have stolen our tax.

Instead of telling them off, we have praised them to the skies as the best thing that has happened to us when the reality is the opposite that most of them have been the worst thing that have happened to us through their mediocre leadership.

When they have blundered, we have let them go scot-free apart from talking about it in pubs, minibuses and other such public forums.

As for the leaders themselves, nothing has preoccupied them more than amassing wealth for themselves as well as for their friends and family at the expense of the poor.

The cashgate is essentially about that.

Our leaders have lacked any tangible and achievable strategic vision over the years such that 50 years since independence, we are still worshipping donors and at their mercy which all depends on which side of the bed they have woken up from.

This cannot and should not go on. Other countries that were as poor as us 50 years ago are singing a new song today with massive improvements in the standards of living for their people. It was all down to leadership, honesty and hardwork, characteristics that are in very short supply in Malawi.

It is clear something must be done and but it is all down to us, 13 million Malawians. We had a revolution in 1992 to claim back our human rights from a cabal of blood-thirsty vampires who took them away from us.

Apparently, it was not enough and we seem to be desperately in need of another one in whatever form to get rid of the present national malaise and sloppiness as we are paying a very high price for it.

I will finish with my usual rallying call and it is that until the people of Malawi take back the country from the grip of corrupt and mediocre leaders through a crash course in seeking accountability and choosing only leaders that are truly visionary, they will always suffer the ultimate humiliation inflicted by Western donors who are here to guard their taxpayers’ money.

Malawi is ripe for another revolution to stop the nonsense of our country being a perpetual beggar.