THE FOLLY OF ROMANTICIZING DESPOTS

Ngwazi Dr H. Kamuzu Banda, as our founding president preferred to be called was rather quite an enigmatic a figure. For someone who lorded over us for some good 3 decades, it is simply incredible how little Malawians ‘intimately’ knew the man. This was not an accident of course. It was all part of a carefully designed persona, steeped in mythical obscurity, meant to keep Malawians in check. So successful was this project that most Malawians at the time grew up believing that any dissident whisper would be picked up by the walls and trees around them and somehow waft in the gentle breeze into the mighty Ngwazi’s ears at the opulent Sanjika Palace. The Ngwazi literally defined life as they knew it. Heck! Dr Banda owned everything they surveyed! Including, naturally, the very piece of earth on which their tiny and sorry feet were planted. And so it was generally in this spirit of things that May 14 was plucked from thin air and declared to be a public holiday in celebration of the great leader’s birthday. No one was of course bold enough to interrogate the historical accuracy of the ‘birthday’ claim. Well, at least not openly. Only idiots tempted fate in that fashion during those days. But like much of the Kamuzu symbology, the ‘birthday’ was done away with in the euphoria that engulfed the country at the dawn of the so called 2^nd republic in May 1994. So strong was the anti-kamuzu sentiment at that time that anything seen as dismantling of his dark legacy was wildly cheered on regardless of its merit. So Kamuzu’s name on public infrastructure was quickly scrapped off and replaced with something else. Never mind that in the intervening years the infrastructure itself was allowed to rot away in neglect. Prisons notorious for holding the Life President’s political enemies, real or assumed, were shut down in an exuberant display of presidential populism. The fact that the prisons held other non-political prisoners who would then need to be transferred and crammed into already over-stretched correctional facilities was hardly mentioned to the new man in charge. If it was, then it must have contemptuously been waved away. The trajectory of public benevolence was quickly reversed. The people, who for years had been forced to part with their hard earned chickens, or if they were lucky just eggs, as gifts for their Kamuzu, now found themselves at the receiving end of presidential charity. Soon they were being showered with new K50 notes at public rallies. That was, of course, if they were lucky enough to hold on to one in the mad scramble that usually followed the ‘donation.’ How people never saw the debasement in money being thrown at them for it to be fought for like one would do with bananas at caged apes is beyond me. It is fair to say that with each passing year during the first decade after the reintroduction of multiparty democracy, the coldness towards Kamuzu somewhat thawed. What was to follow during the subsequent 10 years, however, would have made the Orton Chirwas, the Atati Mpakatis and the Gadamas of this world turn in their graves.

On the face of it, it is rather difficult to understand Bingu’s morbidly enthusiastic embrace of Kamuzu. This is particularly so if one believes the claims that Bingu himself made that he had fled the country in the 1960s, fearing for his life, after policy disagreements with Dr Banda. One would thus think that he was just as better placed as anyone to make the correct call about Dr Banda’s legacy. The simplest explanation for Bingu’s rather strange behaviour was that it was all politics. He was in the middle of a fierce feud with his mentor and political patron Bakili Muluzi over who would be calling the shots in government post 2004 and wanted to find a political foothold to sustain himself. Since conventional wisdom had it that Muluzi’s bastion of political power was the Southern region, Bingu’s overtures to Kamuzu must have been a shrewd move to endear himself to the latter’s kinsmen in the centre. And so began the most comprehensive project to rehabilitate Dr Banda. His name that had so unceremoniously been knocked off several public buildings and facilities was restored in the splendour of a presidential decree. The project to construct his mausoleum, in respect of which the UDF administration had shown only a modicum of cosmetic interest, took off with gusto. An imposing statute of the former head of state was unveiled. There was even talk of the former President’s official portrait hanging side by side with that of President Mutharika. Bingu even went to the ludicrous extent of prefixing the former head of state’s title before his own name.  And of course, the dubious ‘birthday’ was reintroduced as a public holiday. How Bingu ended makes one wonder, of course, if the motivation for the cozying up to the Ngwazi was just a cunning political move or whether it was a result of some sincere admiration on his part of the first President’s ways. His impatient references to the need for public ‘discipline’, in response to charges of autocracy, and his authentic bemusement at our opposition to the same had an eerie sound of someone who was truly nostalgic about the darkest days of Kamuzu’s reign. 

To date, the romatincism of Kamuzu has continued unabated. There are no signs that the current administration will change tack and radically depart from the course set by Mutharika. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been celebrating the Ngwazi’s ‘birthday’ this year, would we?

That Kamuzu was a pioneering nationalist cannot be disputed. His role in ‘developing’ the country certainly needs to be acknowledged. But we wrong ourselves if we merely stop there. We need to remind each other that his was a particularly repressive regime that visited some of the most colourful atrocities on the people he was supposed to be serving. The many whose promising lives were snuffed out by his pervasive security apparatus should not be forgotten. The thousands of Jehovah’s witnesses who were exiled from their country for simply refusing to buy party cards should not be shoved aside in our rush to ‘honour’ Dr Banda. We owe it to the many nameless ones who spent uncertain and terrifying nights behind the walls of Mikuyu Prison to tell the whole story. And of course we must not forget folks from the ‘dead north’ who were victims of systemic purges from both the civil service and educational institutions every now and then. The list of the egregious human rights violations that this ‘great leader’ committed against ‘his people’ is depressingly long one must say. But it would do his admires no harm if they refreshed their memory by looking at it and the stark reality that it represents.

An obsession with the truth and nothing but the whole truth should not be mistaken for vengeance. It’s important to point this out because ever since Kamuzu so called apology for his atrocities in 1996, any attempt to re-open discomforting inquiries about the old man’s time at State House is met with slanderous accusations about the inquirer’s malicious intent.  Milan Kundera once wrote that ‘the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.’ Celebrating Kamuzu’s ‘birthday’ the way we do now risks consigning his regime’s excesses to some amorphous bin of irrelevance. And that countrymen, will be our ultimate tragedy because whatever constitutional edifice we sought to put in place in 1994 was supposed to ensure that our ‘difficult past’ was never repeated. If we forget this ‘difficult past’ as we are likely to if this travesty of blindly celebrating Kamuzu is not arrested, we are surely ‘condemned to repeat it.’ History, sadly, is often the product of the dominant voices in society. Of those who control the ‘narrative’. Malawians must be wary of their leaders telling it not as it was. We must wake up to the fact that the picture that our politicians try to paint of Kamuzu Banda is one borne out of political convenience. It is an imperfect caricature of the real despot that Kamuzu was and it does violence to the memory of the many victims of his authoritarianism. History, for it to be accurate and authentic, if at all it’s capable of such, must be told in its totality. We must celebrate our glorious past, whatever that means, without smoothening its coarse contours. We need to look at our yesterday in the eye-with all its attendant inconveniences, embarrassment and painful truth- and hold its gaze. We owe ourselves that less. May 14 does not help our memory’s struggle against forgetting. It should hardly be surprising that our corporate struggle against power is similarly in a moribund state. 

Writing the Big Kahuna’s obituary… For Bingu Wa Mutharika (Ph.D?)

Until that moment, April 5, 2012 had been a rather uneventful day. I had been sitting at my rather ancient desk, probably drafting something. I must not have been engrossed in the task at hand because as soon as the tiny red light on my Blackberry started flashing, indicating receipt of a message, my hand reached out for it. It was a Blackberry Messenger message from my uncle. ‘That prophecy must have been ours after all!’ It read. ‘What are you talking about?’ I quickly shot back my heartbeat picking up a pace. But I need not have asked really. For close to 3 months then, the country had eagerly been awaiting the fulfilment of T.B. Joshua’s prophecy. Now T.B. Joshua is a Nigerian teleprophet, who commands quite a significant following especially in black Africa. It is said that in months preceding April 2012 he had prophesied that an octogenarian President from Africa would pass on. I had not personally watched the prophecy as I was no huge fan of the ‘man of God’. The news had reached me nevertheless. The teleprophet was to apparently ‘clarify’ the prophecy, stating that the old man would certainly not be from West Africa. It thus was to be the case that the search for the target of the divine prediction turned Southwards. The most likely candidates were our old but big kahuna Bingu Wa Mutharika and Zimbabwe’s comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe. And so in the months after the prophecy, intense attention had turned to these 2 old men. Each and every public appearance was scrutinized for tell-tale signs and each and every unexplained public absence was fiercely speculated on. And so when I got the slightest inkling that the prophecy might in fact have been fulfilled within our shores, I was understandably….Well.

Anyway, as we all know, it turned out that the President had indeed passed on or about April 5, 2012. After almost 2 days of posturing and astonishing scheming, the ruling party accepted the inevitable. Bingu was declared dead and the hitherto side-lined vice President ascended to the Presidency. She would become Africa’s second female President and Southern Africa’s first.   The political changes that followed then were truly seismic. The DPP, rather harshly, realised that the throne on which it had been perched in fact had marshmallow foundations. The collapse was spectacular. Folks who though not holding any elected public office, had held considerable sway over the tiny republic’s public affairs suddenly found themselves on the peripheral. And concomitantly, those who had been in the unenviable despair of political wilderness just a couple of hours before Bingu’s fall now revelled in new found political glory. Wondering, rather zanily, how they could ever have thought that they were staring at a cynical political cul-de-sac.

It’s been 2 years now since Bingu’s rather ignominious exit.  And while his end was greeted with a euphoria reserved for the very worst in our society, one gets the unnerving feeling that time may just rehabilitate Bingu’s soiled legacy. Chipembere had a point when he said that history takes long to deliver its verdict. For indeed, the inherent contradiction in assessing the legacy of a departed President is that to some significant extent, his greatness or smallness is inextricably linked to the performance of those who follow him or her in office. For within 24 months after his passing, folks are asking if he really was as bad as their feelings at his final hour had suggested. True he was one arrogant man, but compared to the flip-flopping we have seen in our tiny republic’s administration since his passing, his arrogance could almost pass for principle. Some of his dreams for the country may have been too vivid even for the country own good, but at least he had some vision that he could articulate.  Quite a far cry from the pettiness and mundaneness that has now engulfed the Presidency. Bingu’s sometimes-resentment towards the West and his whipping up of nationalistic sentiments appeared rather anachronistic and desperate at times, one has to admit. But neither did he have the pitiful naivety of believing that the West epitomised a benign and altruistic santa claus with bags and bags of presents to dole out.

In the 2 years that the son of Chisoka village eternally returned to his people, little has changed for the common man. Public service delivery remains poor; from provision of security to drugs in public hospitals. The refreshing promise to liberalise the public airwaves has dissipated as swiftly as it was made. And the looting from the public kitty has continued unabated. If you thought the days of unelected and powerful patrons were over, you were dead wrong. What has conveniently changed is the colour. The metamorphosis from blue to orange has closed with breath-taking speed. We sure are rocking. But we are not making progress.

Far from it for me to try to rehabilitate the legacy of the dead. But if truth be told, Bingu eloquently makes the case for the law’s reticence in meting out the harshest of penalties for those who fall foul of it. The vagaries of human behaviour indeed make sense of the fiction that the worst of offenders are not yet born. For just when you have sunk so low and you are so fortified in your belief that there is no more sinking to endure, it’s when someone drills even harder and lower. Somehow, just somehow, one gets the feeling that we might have been too quick in writing the big kahuna’s obituary…

Of drum beaters…

‘Chitsiru chinayimba ng’oma, ochenjera navina’ is a Chewa saying. Literally, it means the foolish will beat the drum and the clever ones will dance. But it says a lot about Malawians in general. You see, most Malawians are risk averse. Especially those who lay claim to enlightenment. They know too much for their own good. The economy aint right. No investment can thrive in this environment. Inflation is through the roof and the runaway interest rates should dissuade any clear minded fellow from obtaining a loan from the bank to finance a business project. Knowledge, instead of freeing the creators in us, somehow fetters our imagination. It becomes that thick albatross around our neck that tie us to our average normalcy. So we seek out safe zones and find comfort in there. Nchifukwa chake ambiri timajiwa. Chifukwa pakadafunda…

Take our local politics for instance. Those in elected office have been criticized for being clueless at best and ‘unfathomable idiots’ at worst. Be this as it may, those who supposedly know better will never throw their hat into the ring. They will be content providing an exasperated running commentary on the failings of our politics. Often from a safe distance of their social media accounts and the dim lit corners of drinking joints. So thick is our risk aversion that even when those of recognised brilliance decide to risk it by joining politics, we look at them aghast. Wondering what on earth they are thinking leaving ‘plum jobs’ to join dirty politics. So when Saulos Chilima gets lampooned for stepping aside as CEO of one of Malawi’s leading corporations, one should see it for what it is. Our pathological aversion to anything risky.

That explains in part why our politics is dominated by those who do not have a litany of qualifications after their names. It is dominated by those who risk big. By the bold ones. They dare to tread even where the matadors fear. They simply take the plunge while we the enlightened ones run sophisticated statistical models to measure the associated risks. And that is why my friends, they, for the foreseeable future, will continue to beat the drum while we, the supposedly clever ones, will continue to wiggle our sorry bums in a stupendous dance…Ha! Chitsiru ndi ndani pamenepa?

As they say, in a democracy people get a government they deserve. Of the people, by the people and for the people. 

It’s NOT just a joke damn it! So get over it…

It seems like ages ago when Max Lucado used to inspire me with his daily devotional messages. I stopped reading them when I abandoned my yahoo! E-mail account through which I had subscribed to his service. And it’s been years too. But somehow, a line from his devotionals has stuck with me. It’s a line I even used when I preached -yes preached- some years ago at Chancellor College. Boy that seems like ages, ages ago…But the line is simply this; “[Insensitive] Words cause wounds that heal slowly.” [Or something along those lines…] I dunno why folks are so bloody careless with their words. I don’t know why even the well-meaning are so reckless with what comes out of their mouths. 

Of course it’s not possible to guard against all verbal slipups in the world. Some words will hurt not because they are hurtful in themselves but because they exploit that sore fragility of the listener. Their insecurity, fears and what not. Against such kind of hurt, perhaps no provision can be made. But there are words that are inherently vicious that unlike the benign word that hurt those already vulnerable, these take some inhumane stoicism to wave away. So make no mistake. Before you let that joke slip or that comment escape your lips, think about the impact it will have on your audience. For many are the words that for all their superficial innocence exploit stereotypes of the worst kind. Racism, sexism, tribalism and all the other isms that continue to inflict so much pain around us. I see it all the time on social media. In conversation with friends. In writings of most respected authors.  It’s a deep seated problem really. It’s diagnosis particularly tricky. Part of it is simply ignorance of course. After all, sensitivities have got a cultural context as well. Looking at a person in a particular way may be offensive to people from a particular culture. For some, it may be that innocuous omission of the prefix ‘please’  from a most sincere request which at the end horribly comes out as a presumptuous command, which may cause offence. Indeed, for as many people as there are on earth, each with their own singular past, so are the possibilities for offence.  And it’s even more challenging because most of the frames through which we process our communication are deeply embedded in our psyche. Lifelong held assumptions about people cannot simply disappear as a result of a lecture on the niceties of courtesy and what not.  

Its complicated business this sensitivity stuff. But that’s no excuse for harsh brusqueness.  A little attempt to know our audience could be a useful starting point. An acknowledgment that our most fundamental assumptions about people may be wrong could also be helpful. And a resistance to the often powerful tendency to rob our audience of their humanity. It’s strange isn’t it, how the golden rule is often trampled on? Do unto others as you would have done to yourself, simply put is ‘see in others the humanity you see in yourself.’ The vulnerabilities that are there in you, that potential to hurt, to tear and bleed exist in the next person regardless of age, sex or any other status as they do in you. If this thought endured at the front of our minds (as opposed to its back), we would cause others less hurt with our words…

EULOGIZING A COLOSSUS; NELSON ROLIHLAHLA MANDELA (JULY 18, 1918 ~ DECEMBER 5, 2013) –PART II

Did he sell the blacks out?

Racial discrimination and the domination of the black race in South Africa started with the arrival of Jan Van Ribbeck at the Cape of in 1652. When Apartheid in the form that it existed between 1948 to the early 1990s was introduced, there was already in place systemic subjugation of the blacks by the white imperial forces for close to 3 centuries. What this means is that by the time that Mandela was assuming the Presidency in 1994, this system which structurally and institutionally disadvantaged black people had been religiously enforced for over 3 centuries. It is naïve to expect these historical injustices to have been reversed within the first 5 years of Madiba’s presidency let alone during the negotiation period of the CODESA process. When a task is so ridiculously monumental, one is setting himself up for failure if he decides to do everything at once. Pragmatism dictates that one takes a step at a time. It was President Mandela’s judgment that what South Africa needed after centuries of the injustice of apartheid was a period of reconciliation and a coming together. That he needed to build a nation. This is the task he set apart for himself and one which he executed with amazing grace.

This does not mean, however, that it is illegitimate to inquire whether or not more could have been done to end the economic subjugation of the blacks. This question is particularly imperative when one considers that the Freedom Charter, the ANC’s [and other liberation movements’] statement of core principles committed the organisation to the nationalisation of industry and the redistribution of land.  While most of the charter’s demands found their way into the new Constitution, these 2 core demands were conspicuous by their absence. The ANC has subsequently rejected blanket nationalisation of industry preferring instead to ‘increase state ownership but only in sectors where it deems appropriate.’ See the Party’s 2012 Mangaung Conference resolutions.

There are several things to be said here. First of all, it would appear to me that the Freedom Charter was a statement of aspirations. Goals which those in the struggle movement hoped to see realized. And while this does not in any way lessen the significance of the document, as evidenced by how much it influenced the content of the new Constitution, I doubt if those in the struggle movement thereby irrevocably bound themselves to live by its contents regardless of the exigencies of the moment. It should be obvious, one imagines, that the policy that anchors a struggle movement will often be markedly different from that which informs the hard business of governing a country. Secondly, the ANC took the Charter to a negotiating table through the CODESA process. If all its demands had been forced down the throat of the National Party [as would largely have been the case if the 2 keys demands above had been accepted] then one wonders if the process would still have qualified as a negotiated settlement. We can debate whether the ANC conceded too much ground during the negotiations, considering that the other demands in the Charter were largely basic human rights demands anyway. But what is not debatable is that in any negotiation worth its name, compromise is inevitable. It is worth speculating, however, what would have become of South Africa if there had been a radical departure in economic policy in 1994. Would its people have been better off compared to their current station if the mines and other industries had been nationalised and if the land had been redistributed? How best would this have been carried out? Would the government have been assured of the availability of legitimate force to enforce some aspects of this reform considering that the Police and military formations were still [practically]] largely controlled by the whites? I can only speculate.

This, however, is not to suggest that Madiba’s arm may not have been twisted during the negotiations. Capital in South Africa was largely in the hands of white people and its naïve to think that they would have given it up on a silver platter. They naturally pushed back against the more radical demands encapsulated in the Freedom Charter. This they did with some success. And let nothing detract from the fact that the social and economic condition of the average black man [the overwhelming majority] is nothing less than a scandal. For the majority of blacks, the train has really not left the station. They continue to wallow in abject poverty, stricken by disease and a life of violent crime. This is in sharp contrast to what goes on the other side of South Africa. Where the dizzyingly wealthy, the majority of whom are white but who since 1994 [thanks to the government’s affirmative action and pure corruption] have been joined by a tiny group of blacks, live in opulence behind high-electric-wire-topped- security walls. The situation was starkly captured by South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe on December 9, 2013 in his address to the Joint session of South African Parliament commemorating Madiba when he said: “Why then do the majority of the world’s people, the great unwashed, live in abject poverty when a fair distribution of the world’s resources would not even minimise the material comfort of those who wallow in luxury at the top of social articulation? We cannot claim to follow in the footsteps of this inspiring leader when we have these shocking levels of poverty sitting cheek by jowl with fabulously dazzling material riches known to human history.”

It should be fair, in the circumstances, to ask what, if at any, was Mandela’s contribution to this shameful condition? Does he bear any responsibility as a result of his omissions during the transition negotiations and his term as President? All these are fair inquires. What is not fair is to omit the context in embarking on the inquiry. When it comes to South Africa, I do not, with respect, think that it should be permissible for anyone to simply wave Malcom X, Sankara and or Mugabe [you can add your favourite ‘revolutionaries to this list!] and think that they have won the argument.

The TRC and accountability for apartheid atrocities

Lastly, we look at the criticism that Madiba failed to punish the perpetrators of apartheid era atrocities. The argument here is that the TRC with its emphasis on restorative justice failed to accommodate the retributive elements of the penal system. That folks who were responsible for horrible crimes during apartheid should have been hauled before the Courts, tried for their evil deeds and accordingly punished. This argument deserves some sympathy, one must say, seeing as it is that retribution and vengeance remain the legitimate aims of any criminal justice system. Rather simplistically, let me rehash how the TRC worked. Perpetrators of human rights violations were encouraged to come forward and essentially render a full account of their evil deeds. A full and frank account rendered one eligible for a pardon of sorts and immunity from criminal prosecution. The victims would fully participate during the process and were at liberty to either support or oppose the application for amnesty. It’s quite accurate, therefore, that healing and restoration was at the centre of this process as opposed to retribution and vengeance.

Again context matters here. Apartheid was a system that had survived for over 4 decades. It was fully entrenched in the country and literally pervaded every aspect of life. And what more; it had the backing of the law in South Africa. Accordingly some if not a lot of what happened under the system, especially on the government’s side, had the colour of law. Perhaps there would have been a danger of retrospective criminalisation if acts which were lawful at the time were punished at a later date. Secondly, rules of criminal responsibility are such that the criminal justice net would have hauled quite a ludicrously huge number of people into its process. This is so because accomplices [aiders, enablers, procurers, abettors, counsellors] would all have been fixed with criminal responsibility. Considering how pervasive apartheid was one would surmise that there would have been droves and droves of white people being hauled before the courts to answer criminal justice. These were going to be criminal trials on an industrial scale. [Though the struggle movement was also responsible for some atrocities, this pales in comparison to the scale of the government inflicted atrocities on the African people.] Inevitably, this was going to take a racial tinge [of victors’ justice] which was going to affect social cohesion in the long run. But above all, what must be emphasised is that the TRC system was a form of justice. The fact that it sought to restore and heal as opposed to exact vengeance does not make it any lesser form of justice. At the end of the day, retribution and forgiveness are all moral choices and they can be no rational basis for saying that one is superior to the other. Sight must not be lost of the fact that there was full victim participation in the process and that some of the perpetrators were in fact denied amnesty and were eventually prosecuted. In some cases, however, the victims themselves supported the amnesty application. I personally would have loved to see more prosecutions of the perpetrators of the especially heinous crimes. And the fact of the matter is that this is what the majority of the black people would have wanted. Given such kind of pressures, it is amazing that a decision to go against the populist tide can be seen as a sign of weakness in a leader. I should think it takes a particular kind of moral courage for a politician to stand for a position which is unpopular.

The fallible giant…

Let me finish by quoting from Barack Obama’s eulogy delivered on December 10, 2013 at Madiba’s memorial service:-

“Given the sweep of his life, and the adoration that he so rightly earned, it is tempting then to remember Nelson Mandela as an icon, smiling and serene, detached from the tawdry affairs of lesser men.  But Madiba himself strongly resisted such a lifeless portrait. Instead, he insisted on sharing with us his doubts and fears; his miscalculations along with his victories.  "I'm not a saint," he said, "unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying."

It was precisely because he could admit to imperfection – because he could be so full of good humor, even mischief, despite the heavy burdens he carried - that we loved him so.  He was not a bust made of marble; he was a man of flesh and blood – a son and husband, a father and a friend.  That is why we learned so much from him; that is why we can learn from him still.  For nothing he achieved was inevitable.  In the arc of his life, we see a man who earned his place in history through struggle and shrewdness; persistence and faith.  He tells us what’s possible not just in the pages of dusty history books, but in our own lives as well.”

Madiba was a fallible human being. Human greatness is never measured by how infallible one is. If that was the case, it would no longer be human greatness but something else. It is the human triumph over monumental adversity that defines human greatness. That unwavering commitment to principle. That simplicity, purity and rawness of righteous desire. To simply be a man. With equal opportunities. Where one’s skin colour is of no more significance in the quest for realisation of one’s potential than one’s sex, tribe, gender or sexual orientation. And the colossal personal sacrifice made to live that principle. 27 years away from what most of us take for granted. “A son denied the opportunity to bury his mother and a grieving father a chance to bury his son.” Shattered family lives… So let there be no mistake. Madiba, the fallible giant, lived his life with remarkable nobility. He did his duty. The world was a better place because of the sacrifices he made in it. And the son of Qunu has rightly earned his place in the ‘pantheons of history.’

EULOGIZING A COLOSSUS; NELSON ROLIHLAHLA MANDELA (JULY 18, 1918 ~ DECEMBER 5, 2013) –PART I

My first 'encounter' with Nelson Mandela must have been around 1994. It was from the musical Sarafina which is set in Apartheid South Africa. I must have been around 8 then and can safely say that I was already precociously politically aware. He sounded too good to be true this Mandela guy. Almost a mythical character. However, a few years later, as I dug deeper on him and other heroes that I had discovered along the way, the likes of Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr., my affection and admiration for the man grew. Before December 5, 2013, if I had been granted just one wish in the world, I am more than sure that it would have been to meet this man. Let’s keep it simple. I admired the man because not simply because he spent 27 years in prison; there are many people who have spent even longer periods of time in incarceration on politically motivated grounds. Rather, it was the raw and unapologetic commitment to principle that the 27 years represented that earned him my eternal respect. It was the way in which he went about building a nation after he became President that etched his name onto my heart. The boldness to reconcile with the enemy, to embrace his tormentors and the magnanimity and grace to move on from a painful past without forgetting its useful lessons. Let’s face it. Madiba is stuff of legends. President Obama was right when he said that we are unlikely to see anyone of his ilk again. Not that human decency has perished from the face of the face. But rather because the peculiar political circumstances that conspired to birth the Mandelas of this world won’t probably repeat themselves. True there remains a lot to be done in this world. A lot of evil to be confronted. There is war on poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy to be won. But surely this will not require those waging these wars to be locked up on a lonely and wretched island for close to 2 decades. [There is a popular misconception that Mandela spent 27 years on Robben Island. In fact he only spent some 18 years or so on the Island. The remainder of his prison term was served at Pollsmoor and Victor Verster prisons.] It’s further true that there still remains political settlements to be secured in the Palestine and that there are still many peoples of this world who are denied the basic rights and freedoms that some of us take for granted. Countries like Burma, Saud Arabia, Swaziland come to mind. Maybe these still need gallant sons and daughters to lead them to the Promised Land. But so different are the variables that they are unlikely to attain even half the stature of Mandela.

There are those who in light of his passing on December 5, 2013 have sought to cast aspersions on his legacy. They have called him names. From an opportunist who had greatness thrust upon him to a western puppet and everything in between.  It’s a free world. The kind that Mandela was ready to lay down his life in order to see realized. So people can blurt out what they fancy. However, it is in that same freedom that we add our own voice to the ‘debate’ about the Madiba legacy.

Greatness thrust upon him…

There is no gainsaying that Mandela was a product of peculiar historical circumstances. He became of age in a country in which a brutal system of racial discrimination condemned him and others of his race to “a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” They were to be excluded from the political process simply because they were black. Faced with such kind of stark social reality, one must make a decision. For good or bad such calls alter history. Madiba, dutifully, made the right call when he got recruited by Walter Sisulu into the ANC in 1942/43. Any person who has even fleetingly glanced at the history of the ANC will know that before his incarceration in 1962, Madiba had been a leader in the ANC. It was him and others who pushed for a more ‘militant’ liberation organisation. In fact his views to revolutionize the ANC [through formation of a Youth League for instance] were considered so radical by Dr. Xuma, the leader of the ANC at the time that him and his comrades [Sisulu, Lembede] were dismissed as being “naïve firebrands.” In fact, by the time that Mandela was being incarcerated he had been the movement’s leader for the Transvaal, secretary of the Youth League on top of being a member of the party’s national executive committee. This clearly shows that Mandela was a leader in his own right even before he was thrown into prison.

Even a cursory examination of the role he played during the Rivonia trial [his 3 hour court address] and at Robben Island clearly shows that his colleagues recognised him as the first among equals. It’s accurate indeed that the ANC had rivals within South Africa. Long Walk to Freedom, Madiba’s autobiography details how Robert Sobukwe, the leader of the Pan Africanist’ Congress, the ANC’s chief rival organisation, made it a point to antagonise Mandela and to challenge his ‘leadership’ of political prisoners on the Island. But for those within the ANC on the Island, they accepted Mandela as their leader.

The struggle to liberate South Africa has never been a one man show. No honest man can produce evidence that Mandela ever made any claim that he singlehandedly dismantled apartheid. Such evidence is not available because Mandela never made such an outlandish assertion. In fact quite the contrary. Mandela has always been insistent that the liberation struggle was a collective effort. It is even recorded that he resisted any attempt to call for his lone release minus that of his comrades. The slander that he stole other struggle stalwarts’ glory is, therefore, baseless and is indeed just that; malicious slander. But it is indeed true that there was a decision made by the movement in exile in Zambia and London [the likes of Tambo and Mbeki] that they would make Mandela the ‘poster boy’ of the liberation struggle. I guess ‘Free Mandela’ sells well than Free Mandela, Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu, Kathrada, Mac Maharaj….[yo! The list is endless isn’t it?] Can you imagine such kind of a media campaign? Wouldn’t it be a such a damp squib that no traction would in fact be gained? By highlighting the plight of Mandela, the struggle movement was ‘dramatizing [his] shameful condition’ and indeed that of all those prisoners of conscience who were being held on the Island. It was indicting the apartheid regime and everything else that it stood for.

But again History will record that it was Madiba who had wisdom to tell that the pivotal moment to start talking to the racist regime had come. This he did at a great risk to his personal standing within the organisation as others were suspicious of his motives. After his release from prison in 1990, Mandela continued to provide steady leadership to the ANC through the CODESA process. It was him who probably pulled South Africa from the precipice of a bloody civil war when he appeared on national television to calm the nation down after the racially motivated slaying of Chris Hani.  

Surely all this should begin to answer the skeptics unbelievable assertion that Madiba had greatness thrust upon him, no?

To be continued... 

A Note on cash-gate: Can we all calm down, please?

According to published reports [Nation Online and Nyasa Times of November 17, 2013], the civil society in Malawi wants all cash-gate cases to be investigated and prosecuted by the end November [2013]. A petition to that effect will be presented to President Banda in due course. This is the second most outlandish thing I have heard from these guys in as many months; the first one being a threat to boycott the payment of taxes. For starters, it should be obvious to any clear minded individual that the sheer monstrosity of the cash-gate scandal is such that investigations may actually take many months to complete. One would have thought that our civil society would be pushing for more thorough and painstaking investigations for the consequences of a shoddy job should be self-evident. Acquittals and subsequent nauseating settlements in millions of kwachas for malicious prosecution and false imprisonment claims. But this gung-ho attitude is troubling for even more serious reasons. The petition which the Civil Society has prepared will be addressed to the President. It stands to reason, therefore, that in effect what the President will be asked to do is to ensure that the cash-gate investigations and prosecutions are fast-tracked to meet the ominous November [2013] deadline. The only problem with this call is that it assumes that the President has the power to direct how both the Police and the Director of Public Prosecutions investigates and conducts prosecutions in respect of the cashgate scandal. Well, she does not. These 2 institutions are under our law required to operate independently, free from any influence be it presidential or otherwise.  [And I have always thought that this was a good thing. Well apparently not.] The fact that there has been interference in the operations of these institutions by the Presidents in the past does not colour such interference with any legality. Independence of these 2 institutions at the most basic level entails that they should not be at the receiving end of orders from any office on how to do their job. If the President tells the Police and the DPP to finalize investigations and  prosecutions by November [2013], even if the same was feasible which it clearly is not, what will stop her from telling them who to and not to investigate and prosecute? It’s quite ironic, isn't it, that it is now the civil society which is foaming and frothing, championing the anarchy and illegality. Very ironic indeed. It’s a crazy world this one.  

In any event, prosecutions do not just involve the police and prosecutors. It also involves courts which, as is or should be elementary knowledge, do not answer to the President. How legitimate is it to demand that a President deliver on a timetable she has no control over whatsoever? Am not Mrs. Banda fan, naturally, but this is a no-brainer really.

Can we all calm down and be sensible about all this, please? Look, we are all seething with rage that some miscreants helped themselves to our money as our brothers and sisters lay dying in our drugless public hospitals. [How bizarre, by the way! Hospitals without drugs. How about changing their names to ‘Departure Lounges’? Because in all fairness that’s what they have become.] But I digress. We are all mad that cashgate happened. But the last thing we need is a mob mentality. We are a country of laws and processes and we must exercise restraint as these take their course. There are hardworking public servants in this country who are putting themselves in harm’s way [we all saw what these guys are capable of didn't we?] working 20 hour days, on measly pay, so that those who did us this great wrong are brought to book. Let us be patient and let them do their job. Professionally and efficiently. Save the hysteria for another day. We are dealing with a serious issue here. It does not admit of melodrama.