Wallow not in negativity

I saw a post recently in which a Zimbabwean commentator was cheering on his fellow Zimbabweans to participate in the economic boom his country was experiencing. Foreigners, he said, were taking advantage of this boom to a far greater extent than indigenous Zimbabweans were. He lamented the fact that Zimbabweans appeared to wallow in the negativity propagated by the media, especially foreign media, which was ironical as some of the richest black persons on the continent were actually Zimbabwean. He mentioned several Zimbabwean individuals who had invested in various sectors of the economy and were reaping impressive returns on their investments.

I found it intriguing that he did not mention any politician among his economic achievers. I thought I would hear names like Tsvangirai or Chamisa or Mugabe but I did not. Let me reiterate here that private citizens, not politicians, are responsible for the development of any country. I will not go back to the numerous examples I have given before to illustrate this point. You can find endless lists of private citizens in any developed country that have made lofty contributions to the development of their countries.

Politicians do not create wealth. The best they can do is aid its creation and distribution by private citizens. This they can do so by ensuring that the macroeconomic factors are favourable to private trade. Developing and maintaining appropriate infrastructure is one way of achieving this. Another is to make sure that citizens get the services they need, for example health services, with reasonable efficiency. There is a wide array of things that governments are supposed to do for their citizens but when all is said and done, these (the services rendered, that is), do not amount to economic development; they only aid it. Development still remains the preserve of private individuals.

Governments are not good at generating forex either. The shortage of forex in any country is principally the result of a non-vibrant private sector rather than entirely the fault of government. As stated above, the government is expected to promote a conducive economic environment for private firms to be productive, which lends some credence to the fact that to some extent government has a role in the generation of forex. But that role is only supervisory.

I have heard some people suggest that government should develop factories. Granted, production is of the essence as far generation of forex, or creation of wealth generally, is concerned but leaving that activity entirely to government is the sickest thing any society can do. Government tends to be myopic, inefficient, mediocre – and all the other wrong adjectives – in its approach to commercial activities. Manufacturing is too important an activity to be left to Government. It is private citizens, like you and me, who must push these things.

Like Zimbabweans, or rather more than Zimbabweans, Malawians wallow in negativity so much that opportunities slip by right under their noses, unnoticed and certainly un-grabbed. Meanwhile, nationals of other countries long for the opportunity to come here in order to grab these opportunities. When I was looking for motor vehicle spare parts the other day, I was surprised to land on a well-stocked Nigerian shop in Limbe. I did not see an equivalent Malawian one. In Dowa today, a variety of vegetables are grown and sold, which never used to be case before. The people behind such enterprise are not Malawians; they are the Burundians, Somalis and Congolese at Dzaleka Refugee Camp.

Unfortunately, our local media does not make any attempts to diffuse the engulfing negativity around us. I understand them. I am not a trained journalist but I have once been involved in training some. I know that what usually makes news is negative news. It is not the mandate of journalists to give policy direction. All they do is report what is happening in society. I heard one reporter say, “How can we not be negative when all that is happening is negative?” I understood him.

What we, Malawians, shun from is thinking outside the box. Take the issue of cooking oil, for example. All media channels went to town reporting that the price of cooking oil was beyond the reach of many Malawians. That cannot be disputed. What I expected to see were radio or TV programmes discussing what Malawians could do to take advantage of the great opportunity presented by the scarcity of cooking oil on the international market. As I was typing this article, I needed to take a short break to read a news article which indicated that Zimbabwe was, against all odds, on the verge of becoming a net exporter of wheat this year. Bravo!