IN JUSTICE: The Rise of Ralph

It's not yet been three weeks since Malawi's new president, Joyce Banda, put together her cabinet of government ministers. Since then she's received a mixture of reviews for the appointments she made. While some have praised her for unifying a polarized nation by forming a government akin to a coalition made up of leaders from different political parties, others have criticized her for weakening the balancing voice of opposition parties  by bringing their brightest stars into the business of governing. While some have applauded her for purging cabinet of the lawless  individuals who attempted to circumvent the constitution to block her from being sworn in as Head of State, others have expressed disappointment that the new cabinet still another consortium of individuals who are products of the same political establishment that Malawians have lost faith in. While some have marveled at her prudence in appointing to cabinet people who are also members of parliament, others have lamented the compromise this makes to the wisdom of separating the government's executive powers from the powers of the legislature.

Now to this last critique one cabinet appointment stands as an exception: Honorable Ralph Kasambara, the president's choice for the dual function of Attorney General and Minister of Justice. Kasambara is no stranger to public office, having already served as Malawi's Attorney General in the first administration of the late former President, Bingu Wa Mutharika, with whom Ralph eventually found himself at odds, accusing him of wanting to be a dictator and of committing such gross abuses of office as to warrant impeachment. Nor is Kasambara a stranger to public controversy, having taken on the challenge of being the legal representative for Joyce Banda at a time when, as Malawi's elected Vice-President, Banda had found herself estranged from and ostracized by a President determined to punish her for her opposition to his plans to sidestep democracy and anoint his own younger brother as his successor. And Kasambara is no stranger to political persecution either, his vocal attacks on President Bingu's presidency having finally earned him a Valentine's Day visit by police officers sent to arrest him on the trumped up charge of kidnapping a group of thugs whom he and his security guards had succeeded in subduing and preventing from destroying his office with petrol bombs on what are suspected to have been orders from the highest corridors of political power to silence him...for good.  But Kasambara is now the only cabinet minister who is a stranger to parliament; the only one who cannot exercise both the powers of executive government and the powers of legislative government. And while this distance from the house of law-makers, plus the injustices he himself suffered at the hands of an abusive government should make him the ideal candidate for Attorney General and Minister of Justice, there is a looming conflict of interest that threatens Ralph Kasambara's effectiveness in that office. 

Will he ruthlessly scrutinize how far-reaching into parliament the corruption of Bingu's government was, or will he turn a partial blind eye to it for fear that such a probe would implicate members of parliament who are now part of Joyce Banda's cabinet? Will he pursue justice to its end for Robert Chasowa, the young college student activist who was brutally murdered and whose murder was played down by police as a suicide, or will he dispatch another fruitless commission of enquiry for fear that a proper investigation may lead to the arrest of high ranking figures in the former ruling party, thus running the risk of making President Joyce Banda look like another collector of political prisoners? Will he make heads roll for the death of 20 protesters at the hands of armed police back in July, 2011, or should he give the guilty officers a pass for fear of squandering what little support President Joyce Banda may have in the ranks of a police force that answered to a master who was hostile to her for months? Will he insist that Cassim Chilumpha have his day in court to answer to charges of treason brought against him when he was the country's Vice-President, or will he play judge and jury and let it go because President Joyce Banda has just appointed Chilumpha to a cabinet post? Will he start ordering the arrest of those cabinet ministers, parliamentarians, and judges who conspired to take over government unconstitutionally after President Bingu's sudden death on April 5, or will he restrain his horses of justice out of concern that justice may mean taking down ministers who have since pledged their support and allegiance to President Joyce Banda and her party? Will he trace the source of the inexplicable wealth accumulated by the late former President and his officials, and will he hunt down those responsible for robbing the country blind and selling it's resources to the highest bidder in the shape of Mulli, or will he slow the wheels of justice for fear of digging up fraudulent transactions that may have been done way back when both he and Joyce Banda were still in the inner circles of Bingu's government?

It seems to me that for all the calls for justice that will require the summoning of the best parts of his character, credentials, and charisma, Ralph Kasambara's greatest challenge in bringing guilty people to justice is not the number or significance of the individuals who need to be brought to justice. His greatest hindrance is not even anything parliamentarians may offer him to compromise his pursuit for justice, for he has the benefit of being the only cabinet minister who is not a member of their club. His greatest hindrance in the pursuit of justice will probably be the woman she answers to, namely President Joyce Banda herself, for she has as many people to appease as she has to avenge, and she has the prerogative of calling on the young Minister of Justice to do both. This, combined with Ralph Kasambara's own need to appease a new president and urge to avenge for both his and her past political adversities, only exacerbates the conflict of interest. And if Ralph Kasambara turns out to be no more than an avenger or appeaser, then the nation will be left with a General who is no longer worthy of being an Attorney and a Minister who is no longer a dispenser of Justice. The only way for him to avoid such a tragedy is to take lightly the political scruples of the powerful woman we call President, and take seriously the deafening cries of the more powerful woman we call Malawi.                   

My New President's Dilemma

Two days after the sudden death of President Bingu, The Republic of Malawi swore in its Vice President Joyce Banda as the new and first female Head of State, an event whose place in world history as one of the greatest examples of upholding the constitution of a country has largely been understated.  Even so, as with the arrival of all things new, there is an air of optimism around the country, a sense of hope that the new leader will turn out to be as much a catalyst for positive change as she claims to be. 

Three years ago the first signs of her predecessor's autocratic leadership style and the self-enrichment of his coterie were a cause of suspicion among Malawians; then a streak of bad and Ill-advised decisions over the next few months turned that suspicion into anxiety; then the president's defiance of his critics turned that anxiety into levels of frustration that expressed themselves through protests across the country; then the authorities' violent crack down of the protests left twenty civilians dead, and suddenly the country's frustration turned into fear; and the severe degeneration of the economy that followed turned that fear into despair, the kind of despair that was making people lose hope that things will ever get better again. So whether or not Joyce Banda is fit for the job she has inherited, the relief that her providential ascendance to such a high office has injected into the hearts of all Malawians is a much welcome element, for this optimism is going to be key in restoring the people's confidence to participate and have a say in how they are governed.   

But herein lies her dilemma, if not the danger. Joyce Banda is not just receiving promises of support from those citizens who joined her in her critique of the late president's mismanagement of the country; she is not just receiving pledges of allegiance from those who helped her survive the political wilderness and persecution to which she was relegated for over a year by her late boss and his circle of party and cabinet officials; she is not just getting calls of congratulation from the international community that had cut budgetary aid to Malawi to protest against the poor governance and disregard for human rights rampant under the late president's leadership. Joyce Banda's dilemma is that she has also received assurances of support from members of the same political parties that once vilified and demonized her in public, from members of the late president's cabinet of ministers who secretly plotted and publicly announced their intention to block her from taking the oath of office, from people and entities that have built, been a part of, and benefited from the broken and corrupt political establishment of Malawi for twenty years with no visible benefit to Malawi's poor masses, from members of the media who ran a profitable campaign of slander and defamation against her, and from entrepreneurs and businesses with whom her predecessor is suspected to have done numerous back door deals at the expense of Malawi's economic recovery.  So Joyce Banda cannot ride this current wave of euphoric optimism forever. Mobs are too fickle to sustain a single unified mood for a long period of time, not to mention that the memory of the collective is often shorter than that of the individual. Soon the euphoria will give way to high and conflicting expectations that the country will demand to be met by the presidential novice, and where expectations are great and conflicting there is also the prospect of great disappointments. And this is where Her Excellency's leadership will face its greatest dilemma and test, a test of whom she will choose to disappoint. 

The country is in a mess, its furniture in disarray. It needs an extreme make-over, a woman's touch if you will. But some of the people promising to help Joyce Banda govern are the very ones she needs to purge from the corridors of power, and some of the systemic infrastructures she needs to deconstruct are the very ones which enable those people to stay in power by hopping into one party while still serving a term of office under the banner of another party without needing to resign from office in order to protect its integrity from their conflict of interests. So these people won't go out without a fight. They have great power, numbers, and money, all of which will be wielded against her and all of which she will have to sacrifice in order to get the job done and quickly, for two years is not a long time in government. 

So if Joyce Banda is to succeed at cleaning up the government, she is going to have to act quickly after the days of national mourning for President Bingu have come and gone. She is going to have to act more like a doctor conducting emergency surgery than one prescribing a long-term dose of medication.  But if she takes the tough measures this country needs to recover, the political establishment will resist it, and the country will not be able to stomach the ensuing political war for long, for the electorate has a weak stomach. Then she will be accused of having the same autocratic leadership style as her predecessor, and the accusation will be partly true. This is her first choice. The alternative will be to make the enemies of Malawi's progress her political friends, which won't secure the full measure of freedom, justice and prosperity that Malawi is capable of, but will secure her political longevity. In the end, her dilemma may be a simple choice between cleaning up the country at the cost of the next election on the one hand, and securing the next election at the cost of truly cleaning up the country on the other. But just because the choice is simple, does not mean it will be easy. 

Can't Blame A Dead President For This

The president of Malawi, Bingu wa Mutharika,  has died after suffering a heart attack. 

This is the kind of news that would put any country in a state of shock and mourning, but instead an air of uncertainty hangs over Malawi as government ministers have neither announced his death nor described what arrangements have been made for the Vice-President, Joyce Banda, to be sworn in and given the reins of power as the country's constitution clearly stipulates. The delay in the announcement is causing unnecessary anxiety in every home, every office, every street, every city, and every village in the country. The fact that two days after Bingu died, state media house, Malawi Broadcasting Corporation, has yet to mention the president's heart failure and demise, is just one of many signs that a deliberate effort is being made to keep information under heavy guard and Malawians in the dark. And while President Bingu could be blamed for many things, he cannot be blamed for this.

Adding to the confusion have been disturbing reports and rumors of a high-level emergency cabinet meeting being held somewhere in the country's capital, Lilongwe, without the Vice-President and with neither explanation of the meeting's intent nor justification for such an illegal and unconstitutional usurpation of the presidential prerogative of convening a cabinet meeting. It raises the probability that these ministers were really the driving force behind  President Bingu's clinging to power in the face of country-wide unpopularity, for now that the president is dead, they no longer have the luxury of hiding behind him and masking how desperate they are to stay in power. One would think that the presence of several qualified lawyers on the cabinet would alert them to the dangers of having a cabinet meeting that hasn't been called by a Head of State, but it seems clearer now than ever that Malawians were right in suspecting that cabinet is littered with ministers who treat the constitution more as a suggestion than as the highest law in the land. And while President Bingu could be blamed for many things, he cannot be blamed for this.

Most telling was the panic with which the ministers are reported to have left the hospital where doctors failed to resuscitate the president after his heart failure. The constitution clearly states that "whenever the President is incapacitated so as to be unable to discharge the powers and duties of that office, the First Vice-President shall act as President." Most Malawians feel assured that this clear provision in the constitution means that while it is natural to feel saddened by the death of our leader, there is no need to panic as if the country is now in a state of emergency, lawlessness, or free fall. So in the absence of a constitution, such panic would be understandable, but in the presence of the constitution we have, such panic is suspect. And when the leaders of government begin to panic, the citizens who remain calm begin to see clearly that none of these ministers, including the president's brother who serves as foreign minister, are fit to lead Malawians through turbulent times. And while President Bingu could be blamed for many things, he cannot be blamed for this.

If the intent of the inner circle that President Bingu has left behind is to find a loophole in the constitution that can be manipulated to prop up the president's brother as the one to take over the running of the country, they will not find it, for such a loophole does not exist. If their intent is to find a legal means of hanging on to their cabinet seats or convene cabinet meetings without the knowledge or consent of the Vice-President, they will not find it, for such a legal means does not exist. To find ways of transferring presidential powers to anyone other than the Vice-President, finding loop holes in the constitution and consulting crooked lawyers will not be enough. They will have to burn every existing copy of the constitution; they will have to dissolve parliament; they will have to declare marshall law and fill the streets with armed gangs; they will have to burn down the magnificent house of parliament and declare it obsolete; they will have to imprison and execute me and every citizen who dares to protest against it; they will have to assassinate the vice president and declare whoever they appoint president a dictator and emperor for life. And while President Bingu could be blamed for many things, he will not be blamed for this.

I am not a Joyce Banda supporter, for I do not know her. But as a Christian, it is in my best interest to care whether or not government officials are respecting the document that guarantees that the Vice-President will assume the presidency in the event of a president's incapacity or death, because it is that same document that guarantees me the freedom to worship Jesus Christ as Lord according to the dictates of my conscience. And if today those officials are trampling on what the constitution guarantees Vice-President Joyce Banda, tomorrow they will trample on what it guarantees me and the flock of Christians I shepherd. And as a shepherd, my duty is not just to feed the sheep, but to also fight off the wolves. So as far as I am concerned, these ministers are only delaying the inevitable and running the risk of committing sacrilege in the process, not to mention treason.  And while President Bingu could be blamed for many things, he cannot be blamed for this.

A Miscarriage of Mother Malawi's Pregnancy

Nations are pregnant things and must be handled with care if they are to bring forth healthy offspring into the world. This is what I find from the curious case of my country of Malawi, which had three pregnancies over the last century,and which entered the new century in the middle of a fourth pregnancy. 

In her first pregnancy, Malawi conceived a child she planned to name Freedom, being impregnated by the revolutionary ideas of such freedom-fighting pioneers as John Chilembwe. But tragically, Mother Malawi had a miscarriage and the offspring of freedom died in the cold winter night of Colonialism. Malawi's second pregnancy was a success, bringing forth the child of Independence, brimming with the promise of new found freedoms and self-determination. But the child soon abandoned the values by which he was raised, denounced his parents, took all the credit for the freedom they gave him, declared himself sovereign over their estate, and changed his name from Independence to Dictatorship. Though this rogue child's rule was threatened and challenged several times, he successfully and ruthlessly cracked down on any contenders, and Mother Malawi has still not really taken stock of how many attempts that selfish child made to maim her and leave her barren for life. But before she had the time or presence of mind to count and nurse her wounds, which is critical to healthy motherhood, Malawi was pregnant again for a third time, and though her labor pains were hard, overdue, and induced, she brought forth a son named Multi-Party, who ended the one-party rule of his rogue brother, Dictatorship. 

But it is now rumored that this boy, Multi-Party, has a twin sister yet to be delivered from Mother Malawi's womb. It is said that because of and in her absence, Multi-Party has struggled to find his balance between freedom and responsibility, between development and governance, between aid and trade, between sovereignty and partnership, between security and justice, between leadership and consensus, between ideology and personality, between rural and urban. But instead of waiting for his twin sister to be born, Multi-Party has carried on without her, feeding and living off Mother Malawi without regard for the well-being of the mother or the child she still carries, and giving no thought to how much the act of welcoming and preparing for the birth of that child is the only thing that will fix the imbalances of his dysfunctional rule. 

Multi-Party's unborn twin sister is called Democracy. And there is no doubt that Mother Malawi is in the delivery room again, for her pain is now felt and groans are now heard all over the country. Malawi is fighting to bring forth her first daughter, a beauty that will be the envy of the nations and tether the excesses of Multi-Party politics, but Multi-Party is making it difficulty by clinging on to Mother Malawi and claiming to be the only child she needs to be happy.  In so doing, Multi-Party is showing all the same traits of Dictatorship, the rogue brother he ousted from power, but under a different name. And by the look of things, Democracy's birth might be accompanied by more sweat, tears, and blood than Multi-Party's.  The question is whether Mother Malawi's pushing in the delivery room will be strong, focused, and concerted enough to bring this child into the world, or be weakened by Multi-Party's depletion of her strength and health until she miscarries. If Malawi is to give birth successfully, she must push with one breath, cry with one voice, sweat from one brow, bleed as one body; and she must interpret the intensifying contractions between the government and the people as painful calls to push some more, cry some more, sweat some more, and bleed some more.         

I was recently reminded of all this during the sublime experience of holding my wife's hand as she gave birth to our third born son, a privilege I wouldn't trade for all the stars in the universe. I saw how that the beauty of the delivery room lies in its apparent contradiction, because a woman giving birth is the quintessence of mixed emotion. In one glimpse you see enough blood to evoke fears of death, and yet hear the voice of a new born announce the beginning of life; in one breath the prospective mother screams in excruciating pain, and in another she laughs with a joy that a man can only watch with envy; in one moment you are glad to hear the baby cry and yet feel you'd do anything to cry in its place; here the baby enters the world without a name, and yet does so already fully known and loved by its parents; here the medical personnel cram a room as though their patient is dying, yet their smiles expose their satisfaction that theirs are the kind of patients who are full of life; the list of such paradoxes could go on. And if you accidentally stumbled upon such a room not knowing that the patient on the table is in the middle of an experience she will regard as the most fulfilling of her life, you would easily find enough evidence in that delivery room to record it in your memory as the scene of a tragedy. But you would be wrong. Dead wrong.

So I dare say that the Multi-Party politics of the Tembo, Muluzi and Mutharika dynasties have been sucking the strength and promise of pregnant Mother Malawi; with their nepotism, election rigging, political arrests, oral law, disregard of the constitution, self-aggrandizing speeches, clinging to power past the prime of life, demonizing foreign donors, amassing personal wealth inexplicably, mismanagement of public funds, exploitation of the police force, intimidation of the media, and a general condescension towards rural people. Perhaps they will do so for a few more years, but I hear the screams of Mother Malawi for true Democracy increasing. And with each scream we must push some more and add all our voices, yours and mine, to the cries of a nation that knows that she is about to be delivered.

Deliver Us From Heatherwickianism

A creed may be a small thing, but we only underestimate its power because we wrongly associate size with significance. But noone would trade in a heart for legs simply because the legs are bigger. Defined simply, a creed is one's guiding principle in making choices in life and leadership. The trouble with a creed is not that everyone has one, but that not everyone knows what theirs is. This is largely because not everyone has understood that despite the changes taking place around us, "the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe", as G.K. Chesterton so aptly put it. But that was way back in the day when apathy or ignorance about a person's ideals and principles was considered dangerous, and knowing the difference between one creed and another was primary.  What our forefathers knew as we must rediscover that all creeds are not created equal. And the only thing worse than having a creed you don't know or can't name is deliberately choosing a bad one, especially in your philosophy of government. Yet this is what many politicians in Malawi have done since the dawn of multi-party democracy in 1994. And of all the bad creeds to choose from as a guide for how to be involved in government, the worst and most popular creed among Malawian politicians and voters is what I call "Heatherwickianism".

This is a creed of political survival at all cost. It is so named after Dr. Heatherwick Ntaba, not because he invented it, but because he mastered it to the point of being its very embodiment. While Malawi was staggering on her feet under the crushing weight of Kamuzu Banda's dictatorship, Dr. Ntaba was enjoying first class treatment as the dictator's personal physician, with his lips in such close proximity to the president's ears that one wonders how much of his influence on that oppressive regime  went beyond the sphere of medicine. And when ordinary Malawians were finally agreed on doing away with that dictatorship between 1993 and 1994,  Dr. Ntaba was still clinging on to it in the prestigious role of Foreign Minister. Meanwhile, Malawi's first democratic elections in 1994 did not just succeed in ousting from power the dictator-propping machinery of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), but also created a crisis of identity for the likes of Dr. Ntaba who had been wired to serve a dictator but now had to pretend to be democrats in order to survive.

In a brilliant political move, Dr. Ntaba once again showed his Darwinian instincts by coming out publicly in November 2001 to warn the country's first democratic president, Dr. Bakili Muluzi, to watch out for John Tembo, whom Ntaba claimed was still bent on using the MCP machinery to "do away" with him. In so doing, even though he was still the Treasurer General of the much loathed MCP at the time, Dr. Ntaba began the chameleon-like process of distancing himself from his MCP demons and styling himself as an advocate of democratic values. This long process has culminated in Ntaba securing a place in the inner circle of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) where Ntaba now serves as the president's spokesman. In that role, it is not uncommon to find him peddling partisan propaganda in the local and international media, not only defending every policy of the Bingu Administration, but doing so with the same eloquence and intelligence that have served him well in dignifying and masking his political hypocrisy and his condescension to every political opponent. Ntaba is famously spoken of as having the intelligence of a computer, which I think may be an understatement, for he is more cunning than a computer. His is the ingenuity of a virus.

My point is that Heatherwick Ntaba has survived, not because he is fortunate, but because survival is the very creed he is committed to. And my complaint is not that he has found nothing better to live for than political survival, or no cause for which he would gladly stake his political career. My complaint is that this inferior creed is the guiding principle for many politicians and voters in Malawi. There are now close to fifty political parties in Malawi, not because they fundamentally disagree with each other on "how" the country should be run, but because they merely disagree on "who" should run it. With this approach, we might as well have as many parties as there are citizens. So as far as I can see, Malawi may be in a democratic era, but will not operate by democratic values until the country is led by people who'd rather not be in government than leave a political party whose creed they agree with to join, help, and vote for another party that is running the government by a creed they have always claimed to disagree with; like when former president Bakili Muluzi endorsed John Tembo for president in 2009 after ten years of telling and convincing the country that Tembo's despotic past makes him unfit to run a democracy.
 
Such heatherwickian transitions from one regime and party to another can only be done by those who have no qualms with lying and deceiving people about where their loyalties lie. Perhaps it is self-indicting that the word "politics" is translated as "ndale" in Malawi's local language, a word commonly associated with ruthless deception. The truth is that those who are in politics or vote with this worldview owe their allegiance to no one. And since there isn't much left in President Bingu's leadership for people to believe in, Bingu's remaining circle of advisers and supporters are not there because they believe in Bingu, but because they believe in power, which is worse. And I prophecy that it will be a sign of the dawning of a new and better era when Malawi has a president and parliamentarians around whom the likes of Heatherwick Ntaba are not welcome. But if we want Bingu to be that president, our prayer and encouragement should be for him to replace his circle of sycophantic yes-men before we start calling for him to resign. 

In Defence of Malawi's President

In politics, victory may be desirable, but one of the tragedies of our modern understanding of history is the belief that losers are not worth remembering. But some losers are better teachers than most winners. A case in point is Adlai Ewing Stevenson II, who lost two consecutive presidential elections in his nation's history, but left a repository of wisdom worthy of our generation's attention. It was he who said "a free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular," but this is a truth long forgotten, and nowhere is it more timely to heed this admonition than in my homeland of Malawi.

My president, His Excellency Bingu Wa Mutharika, is the most unpopular man in the country, and I have argued elsewhere that his lack of popularity is deserved. However, what he doesn't deserve are the sinister and ill-advised calls for a speedy and sudden end to his aging life that have become a common and troubling feature of much loose talk and wishful thinking among those whose quarrel with the Head of State is more thuggish than patriotic. And it is at times like this that such voices as Stevenson's cry out from the wilderness of history to warn us against this mood, not just for the sake of the man who is thus unpopular, but also for the sake of sparing his family and our country from a thousand unenviable perils. A president's death is not a thing to trifle with.

So whatever your quarrel is with your president, however disagreeable you find his policies, to whatever extent you feel aggrieved by his leadership, and however incompetent you find his entourage, see to it that you articulate your sentiments and present your argument with civility and respect, and do so with the passion of someone whose love of country is greater than your resentment of its president. And dare to go the second mile by letting that same love of country give you the moral fortitude to defend the life of your president against those who wish him harm, even if you can't defend his policies. And if you find this hard to do, remember that it is only hard because it is the right thing to do.

And here, another truth from the lips of Adlai Ewing Stevenson II comes to our aid by reminding us that we should not expect that living by better principles than this sadist mood will be easy, because as he put it, "it is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them". But in the midst of this hardship there is encouragement and hope, especially if you are a Christian, that by wishing your president well and spending yourself in prayer for him, you will secure yourself a place in the footsteps of such giants of the faith as Daniel, who not only fought for his principles by denouncing King Nebuchadnezzar's decrees as "harsh", but also lived up to those principles by always greeting his king with the words, "O king, live forever!"

Why Malawians Can't Rise Up

It has been suggested by George Bernard Shaw that a democratic election gives a nation the government it deserves. Nowhere do I find this to be more true than in my own country, Malawi. The government of His Excellency Bingu Wa Mutharika has come under heavy criticism over the last two years for its failure to address the economic troubles and unsound policies that have led to fuel and food prices rising astronomically high, fuel supplies dropping low, forex reserves drying up, unemployment levels skyrocketing, draconian taxes choking businesses and enterprise to death, and souring of relations between government and EVERYBODY. And as the criticism has come piling up from local entities like Non Governmental Organisations, Churches, and Civil Society Organisations, the government has exacerbated matters by responding poorly, becoming more defensive in its rhetoric and playing politics of intimidation and misdirection, the most recent example being the Head of State's recent public address in which he issued a directive to the young cadets of his political party to use every means necessary to thwart anti-government demonstrations that don't exist and silence his foreign critics who don't live here. This ludicrous and deteriorating state of the government is alarming, but I submit to you that it is not nearly as alarming as the fact that this is precisely the sort of government our nation deserves. But allow me to make a case for this with three simple examples.

It is public knowledge that Bingu's performance in the elections of 1994 was embarrassingly dismal, and that his rise to power a decade later would not have happened without the political maneuverings of former president Bakili Muluzi who single handedly side-stepped the democratic process and bull-dozed, campaigned, propoagandaed, and bank-rolled Bingu into office.Intriguingly, this seems to be the very playbook from which the president is getting the tactics he is currently using to get his brother elected president in the next elections of 2014. But before you criticize the legitimacy of Bingu's ascendancy to power, explore the political and corporate landscape of Malawi and you will see that the number of positions of authority and influence to which people are appointed by dubious means far outnumber those to which people are appointed fairly and on merit. So Bingu's rise to power, its flaws notwithstanding, is a reflection of Malawi's widespread culture of favoritism and back-door dealings. We got the government we derserve.

In a secret cable to London that later leaked to the media, the former British High Commissioner to Malawi described Bingu's leadership as "intolerant" and "autocratic". And you may remember how humorously Bingu himself proved the criticism true by intolerantly and autocratically kicking this highest ranking British diplomat out of Malawi. But here I say that before you take the speck out of Bingu's eye, examine the log in Malawi's eye, for you will find that almost every chief in a Malawian village, almost every principal of a Malawian school, almost every manager of a Malawian company, almost every owner of a Malawian business, almost every pastor of a Malawian church, and almost every head of a Malawian home is leads autonomously and is intolerant to having their leadership criticized by inferiors. As a case in point, I recently got in a long line of cars at a fuel station and waited for hours when a wealthy gentleman with a new Mercedes Benz arrived and cut to the front of the line. When I criticized him in front of everyone, he respectfully asked me to shut up, arguing that I had no right to criticize his actions. This sense of self-importance and bwana spirit that doesn't want to hear criticism from people who are considered inferior is spread throughout the fabric of Malawian culture, and is the spirit in which we raise our children, treat our women, manage our employees, talk to the poor and illiterate, and rule over domestic workers. There is a common Malawian idiom which says, "Wamkulu saalakwa", which means "A big person or an older person is never wrong". And no one should be shocked that our leaders and elders act like this. So again I say, we got the government we deserve.

Lastly, Bingu has been accused of presiding over a government of corrupt officials, putting economic policies that either favor the rich who can bankroll and support a political party bankrupt of ideas, or empower members of his Lomwe tribe with influential positions where they are enriched overnight as they serve as his loyal watchdogs, or give opportunities to businesses belonging to Chinese entrepreneurs who have no moral incentive to question his human rights record. But is this corrupted behavior of putting trust in the power of money really an isolated phenomenon? Is it not just a reflection of the corruption widely entrenched in the Malawian psyche? Do you know how many regular Malawians are paying bribes everydato either to get ahead or bypass the system at Road Traffic Offices, Police Stations, Fuel Stations, Immigration Offices, Border Customs Offices, and every other office you can think of? The mindset of making a quick buck is well set in and making an honest gain is widely seen as a vice. If this is how it is in government, then we got the government we deserve.

And this principle could be applied to the government's failure to make decisions, failure to cummunicate an inspiring vision, failure to confront its opponents directly rather than at political rallies, failure to tell people the truth, and you'd get the same result. You'd find that it is irrational to expect these virtues from a government consisting of citizens who were chosen from a culture that largely does not hold these values in high esteem. So the sad truth is that in some twisted sense, Malawi is being accurately represented by this government. This doesn't mean that Malawi likes the way things are in government, but it does mean that Malawi is like the way things are in government. And even if there are exceptions, those exceptions are more sufficient to prove the rule than they are to change it. And it is this reality, this fact of sharing and participating in the same vices we see in our government, this nation-wide guilt, that makes us too complacent to rise up and fills us with fear of repercussions and reprisals for doing so. Our guilt makes us loudly condemn these vices in government officials, but it is also makes us hesitate to punish them for them. So I know that the president has fears of Malawians rising up against him, but I believe those fears are unwarranted. An uprising can only be born where the values and pursuits of a government clash with the values and pursuits of the majority of the citizenry. This is not the case in Malawi. The number of places in Malawi that have leadership values and standards similar to the government's far outnumber the places that practice a philosophy of leadership that opposes that of the government. Even the opposition parties in Malawi have no moral authority to claim that they emulate values, methods, and goals of leadership that are counter-cultural to President Bingu's. I do not say that this widespread culture of leadership is good, for I don't believe it is; nor do I say that it is sustainable, for the world is changing too fast for government to keep it the same. But I do say that if the national anthem is right in calling Malawi a Mother, then President Bingu is as true a son to her as are the rest of us. This means that the only ways for us to get a better president is either to pray that God gives us one that is better than we deserve or to become a better people from whom such a president can be chosen and cherished. And as a Christian, I have the unique opportunity of doing both.

The Renovation of a Nation

I have come for a visit to my home village in the district of Thyolo, which is by aesthetic measures one the most scenic places in Malawi. Boundless are the therapeutic effects that my heart receives from driving past the ever-green tea plantations that escort travelers all the way to the base of the great Mulanje Mountain looming large and rising into the cotton clouds in the distance. And I half-regret that my home of origin is on a detour from the main road that goes towards the mountain, but the return of my thoughts towards home and soon-to-be-visited extended family members is soon a useful distraction from my loss. So off the smooth road I veered, onto a road in desperate need of reconstruction, and the farther I drove toward my beloved Ntambanyama, the more apparent the abject poverty of rural Malawi becomes. Notwithstanding, upon my arrival, I was greeted by beautiful expressions of joy and jubilation that could only be matched by the natural beauty of the tea that grows all around this area. And that moment, somewhere in the deep and nameless places in my heart, I felt the stirring of a long-forgotten truth, that it is this intrinsic beauty of Malawi's untapped resources of nature and humanity that constitutes the true identity and story of Malawi, howbeit a story begging to be written. And with this realization came the far more disturbing conclusion, that the poverty, disease, and idleness I saw around me is the false identity and story of Malawi, a false narrative created by the negligence of Malawi's political, religious, and educated elite. By false, I do not mean that this level of poverty is not factual, but that it is not a given. The riches of natural and human resources are a gift; the poverty is a choice. And the greatest irony and tragedy this poverty is largely a result of the choices made by the rich, ruling, and learned, not the poor, powerless, and illiterate.

And with that heavy thought, I entered the home I grew up looking forward to visit on the holidays when I was a young boy; my Mother's inheritance from my late grandfather, Mr. Mankhwala, whose name is as revered in this village as his resting place across the street, for from this home he established businesses across this district, built a high school, constructed churches, planted maize mills, saved marriages, and raised six children and many grandchildren around Bible principles and stories. But when both my grandfather and grandmother were shot in this home by a gang of armed robbers in the summer of 1998, it was the beginning of the end, not just of everything my grandfather had built or stood for, but also of what people in this area once believed could be achieved by a life of faith, family, and industry, whether urban or rural. Since then, everything he built has either been sold for profits that didn't last a year or has crumbled from damage caused by the rains that have annually drenched this place for a decade. And this house is one of the last buildings standing, but not for long, for after a tour and inspection of the place, I see a wall that has been felled by the recent rains, and all the remaining walls look ready to fall. And so I have come to see this place in it's saddest state, that of becoming a proverb. For to me, this is more than a house; it's a home, a memory, a history, a legacy. And a legacy neglected is soon lost. And I know we have neglected this home for so long that the only way to save it now is to destroy it. About this need to save it by destruction there is general agreement in the family. What can't be agreed is the method of destruction, some proposing to sell the property to the highest bidder and reinvest the funds elsewhere, while others like myself propose a wholesale renovation of the place. Selling the place would cost us nothing in the short term and make us a quick buck, but would cost us a historical treasure in the long run. Renovating the place would cost us dearly in the short term, but would give us a place to not only call home, but to be proud to do so, where family members who grow weary of travel and wandering will gladly come back to for rest and restoration.

And I believe that on a grander scale, these choices faced by my family, the choice of going the easy path of selling or the difficult path of renovation, are the choices we face as a nation. The legacy has been neglected, the foundations ignored, freedoms unprotected, rights abused, leadership undeveloped, ideas rejected, infrastructure unmaintained, technology borrowed, energy depleted, forex squandered, fuel black-marketed, presidency isolated, judiciary dissatisfied, parliament commercialized, aid politicized, and protesters demonized. There is no debate that the situation in the country is so bad that there are things we love in this nation that can only be saved by first beyond demolished to make room for the hard work of building new ones. But how is this to be done? Selling the country's treasures for a quick buck or renovating? I say the nation needs renovation, but it won't be done by a generation of leaders who are attached and committed to the structures and systems of governance that are crumbling around us. It won't be done by the Bingu's, Tembos, and Muluzis because they are part of the generation that built these structures and have a vested interest both to protect the status quo but also to avenge the abuses they suffered under the dictatorial rule of Kamuzu Banda. These men are too angry at the past and each other to paint a vision of what they are for. I long for a leader of my generation who has no axe to grind and who can articulate a vision for renovating the country by calling us all to pursue the ideals of devotion, decency, democracy,and development; not the kind of development that sells the country's treasures to Mulli Brothers or the Chinese in exchange for a pile of carpeted bricks, but the kind that calls us to do the hard work of building things that the world needs. This is a president I will gladly follow, and this is a vision for my country I would gladly die for.

Addressing Dressing by Undressing?

Malawi's Capital City has been hit by a wave of harassment from street vendors who are attacking women who wear trousers in public, the most common forms of attack being loud jeering, name-calling, and stripping the women naked to have them walk around in the nude. While this horrible abuse of women has been done in the streets in full view of everyone, away from view a more sinister horror has been taking place in the hearts of many onlookers; namely the twisted sense of enjoyment, entertainment, and amusement that many have found in the occurrence of these abuses. Instead of mass repudiation of the vendors' actions, there is mass legitimization of their actions. The President's spokesman has legitimized the abuses by saying that the Head of State has more important things to worry about than the actions of a few mindless thugs who want to try his patience. And if Mr. Ntaba is to be believed (and he very often isn't), apparently in another classic exercise in missing the point, the government thinks these vendors' actions are more against it than against women! And so the abuses have continued and spread to other cities, even spilling over into residential areas.

But there are other ways in which the vendors' actions have been legitimized. For example, some are now advising women to stop wearing their trousers in order to be safe, which is just a dignified way of undressing them all the same. Others have continue to buy merchandise from vendors, even merchandise for women, which is just another way of telling the vendors that their presence on the streets is still justified in spite of how abusive they are to the wives, sisters, and mothers for whom we buy those things. Still another way of legitimization is our silence whenever we hear people talking about these horrible acts in a jocular and cavalier manner. But it is not nearly enough to notice this frenzy of amusement in something for which our disgust and indignation are better suited. We must also ask the bigger and potentially more disturbing question about what these abuses and our tolerance of them tell us about the state of the nation; nay, we must ask what ALL the woes the nation is facing tell us about the state the nation is in. And having wrestled with this question for days, with a sense of trepidation and trembling of the knees, I can't help but wonder if my country is in the early phases of a state of JUDGMENT; the kind from which the only way back is a nation-wide repentance of Ninevite proportions!

Before you take my word for it or dismiss it, think about every nation or society that is described in Scripture as having come under the disciplinary hand of God. More poignantly, think about the typical forms of discipline exacted towards nations that turn a deaf ear to the prophetic voices crying out from the wilderness for a way and path to be made straight in preparation for the coming of the Lord. For Sodom, judgment's first knock on the door was their loss of restraint from committing shameful acts of homosexuality in the light of the noonday sun. For Egypt, judgment's first knock was the hardening of the heart of their Head of State and his turning a deaf ear to the cries of his people. For Tyre, judgment's first knock was the forfeiting of control of their wealth and treasures to foreign entities. For Rome, judgment's first knock was God's decision to "hand them over" to do in public and without shame the sins they loved to do in private and of which they refused to repent. For Judah, judgment's first knock was the cutting off of the nation's supply of basic goods and services. For Israel, judgment's first knock was the multiplying of false prophets with flattering lips and shining visions. For Jerusalem, judgment's first knock was the hateful abuse and harassment of women who were left naked and bare in the streets.

I cannot say definitively that my country is under judgment, but I can say definitively that if that's what all these woes are about, then our problems cannot be solved by the president alone. I can say definitively that the problems of this nation are the sum total of what all of us have been doing as inhabitants of this nation. The economic and social deterioration of our country is not the cause of what's wrong with the nation, but a result of it. All that the economic troubles have done is make public the sinful things and filthy idols we have all been hiding. We have been hiding our secret worship of leaders in the "Mose wa Lero" spirit, and it has now been exposed by a publicly broken system for which we can think of no one else to turn to for answers or blame but our deified president. We have been hiding our secret worship of money, and it has now been exposed by our public attempts to bribe and illegally sell and buy services for which we don't want to wait our turn or offer freely out of the kindness we call umunthu. We have been hiding our secret worship of self, and it has now been exposed by a fuel crisis in which the only car I can think of getting fuel for is mine, to the point of getting myself a full tank and two jerrycans of fuel when there already isn't enough to go around. We have been hiding our secret worship of success, and it has now been exposed by short supplies in many commodities for which we are willing to cut in line, lie, and cheat just to get ahead of others. And we have been hiding our secret worship of sex in the private undressing and caressing of women who are not our wives, and it has now been exposed by our tolerance of their undressing in public.

So in the end, it turns out that the state our country is in reveals more about the sins I need to repent of than the problems the president needs to fix for me. And if repentance does not happen for a majority of our nation's citizens, this early state of judgment is bound to get worse before it gets better. So as we have done on countless occasions through the singing of the wise words of our national anthem, let us pray God to "join together all our hearts as one that we may be free..." And for my part, this need for personal repentance and this call for national repentance may be where my reflection now ends, but it is where my own repentance now begins. What about you?

Why I am Afraid of The President?

The most ancient questions ought to be asked to the most modern generation. So it is no surprise that one of the most relevant questions for our time was already asked by a man from Tarsus twenty centuries ago: "Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority?" Two personal experiences should be enough to show the relevance of this question for our time. The first occurred one morning as I was driving to my office from my house. Further up the road I saw a police check point, and as I got closer, one of the uniformed officers signaled for me to pull over. As he checked the credentials of my car, a second officer was also gearing up to stop another car that was driving up to that junction from another direction. But instead of pulling over for an examination, the driver switched gears and started reversing away from the check point at an alarming speed. Upon seeing the car speeding away, the two officers both asked to commandeer my car, and when I obliged, they both jumped into my car and urged me to put my foot on the gas (fuel was readily available back then) and go in pursuit of the speeding car. The chase was exhilarating, but neither my car nor my skills behind the wheel were good enough to catch the assailants. In this instance, the Police's motivation for the chase was authority, namely the authority the Law gives them to investigate and arrest those suspected of breaking the established law of the land. This kind of authority is obviously a real cause of fear only to those that are breaking the law, a fear that I on this occasion did not experience. I knew that these officers had the best kind of authority; a form of authority that Scripture says comes from God himself, the authority to punish wrongdoing. According to Scripture, God has sanctioned governments to use this kind of authority to commend those who do what is right and punish those who do what is wrong. In other words, the exercise of this authority is dictated by what is right and what is wrong, or dictated by law, not men. Thus in submitting myself to this authority by obeying the just laws it is based on and by subjecting myself to its open and public inspection, I found myself freed from any fear of the one in authority. And I am pleased to find that this is precisely what Scripture says I should expect: "Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended." The second experience happened recently as I was sitting in my car waiting in line for fuel at a gas station that had no fuel. Though at no point in my life did I ever think that I'd find it normal to get in line for fuel at a gas station that had none, most gas stations in the city have had no fuel for days, and cars just wait in line in hope that any day now someone whose job it is to bring fuel into the country will either come back from their two-year holiday or get fired. On this particular day, there were also many people whose cars were either already out of fuel or in such short supply that they could not drive to the filling station to fill up, and so had to buy fuel in Jerrycans, popularly and affectionately called zigubu. A few hours of waiting was all it took for half a dozen police to show up in an armored vehicle. They proceeded to confiscate all the jerrycans that had queued for fuel, and doing so without discrimination or explanation. When they had collected all the jerrycans they had found at that filling station, they jumped back into their car and drove off. Now the law allows people to buy fuel in jerrycans IF they have a permit to do so, but these uniformed police officers did not even bother to check who did or did not have a permit to buy fuel in a jerrycan. Of course I have no doubt that not everyone with a jerrycan had a permit that day, but even in that case, a person without a permit ONLY breaks the law when they actually buy the fuel. It is not against any law of this land or any conceivable just law in the conscience of good men either to own an empty jerrycan or to stand in a line with other empty jerrycans. In addition, for the past two years in which fuel shortages have been most acute, many people have been buying fuel in jerrycans without permits and under the supervision of the same police officers who are now suddenly anti-jerrycan! Clearly in this instant, the police officers' actions were not motivated by the authority that comes from the established laws of the land or the universal just laws of conscience. This was an authority of a different kind, not the sort that comes from God or is dictated by laws of right and wrong. This was an authority dictated by men, not laws, and it brings fear even to those that keep the law. The man from Tarsus says: "Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right!" Where the State commends right doing and punishes wrong doing according to the dictates of the law, doing what is right means keeping the law and subjecting yourself to its public inspection. Where the State punishes the law keepers along with the law breakers according to the private dictates of men, doing what is right means refusing to obey any law whose keeping does not protect you from the weapons of law enforcers, and refusing to be inspected and punished anywhere that is not a public court of law. For the law is there to tell us the bad things men are capable of doing when they show no regard for the law, and the law employs the police to protect us from such men; but when the men who show no regard for the law are police officers themselves, then the laws of conscience must employ the people to protect themselves. For anyone in uniform who shows no regard for the law is no longer a law enforcer but a criminal, and any ruler who gives them a directive to act without regard to the law is no longer a ruler but a gang lord. And if breaking the law makes you afraid of police officers, it is because those officers are under the authority of a ruler who upholds the law. But if keeping the law does not make your fear go away, it is because those officers are under the authority of a ruler who only cares about God and his laws if the god in question is the ruler himself! Half of my nation has believed the lie that doing and saying nothing will free us from fear of the one in authority. The other half has believed the lie that doing harm to the one in authority will free us from fear of him. But the truth is that doing what is right is the only way I will ever find freedom from fear of the one in authority, and doing what is right begins with saying what is being done wrong, saying it humbly, publicly, and openly.

Crisis? What Crisis!

My country has been in a state of steady deterioration for the better part of the last three years, and we have not yet reached the bottom. To be sure, there are unprecedented levels of scarcity of basic services and commodities such as fuel, electricity, and forex, making it hard to do most things that contribute to the prosperity and peace of a nation. Factories can't operate in the absence of power, businesses can't import in the absence of forex, and employees and goods can't be mobilized in the absence of fuel. Even so, the country has not yet reached rock bottom. You see, in the middle of these woes and the nonsensical excuses of politicians, it has been easy to forget that our nation was in a crisis of leadership long before it was in a crisis of economics. A pivotal six month period in which a series of bad decisions were made by one leader have held the country hostage economically, socially, and spiritually: the decision to plaster nepotistic propaganda all over the media as to who is fit to be the next president has robed us all of the chance to engage in a democratic nation-wide debate about the nation's future; the decision to oust a foreign diplomat for saying what everyone with an ounce of common sense already knew to be true not only proved that his criticism was accurate but also robed us all of many friends and a chance to break free from the chains of foreign aid at our own pace and on our own terms; the decision to introduce a zero-deficit budget to compensate for the abrupt severance of foreign aid robed us all of a chance to increase our contribution to the cost of government by the gradual increase of productivity instead of the arbitrary increase of taxes; the decision to sign into law a piece of legislation that would give government the power to silence and intimidate the media robed us all of a chance to hold the government accountable for things it hopes to keep out of the public's eye; the decision to go on a month long holiday while the country reeled in a state of free fall robed us of any hope of feeling that our leader's priorities for the nation's recovery are the same as ours. To be fair, one of this government's strengths is its decisiveness, and in a way it is refreshing to see a leader who is not afraid to make a bad decision. It takes a great deal of courage to do that. But if our country is going to recover, it will require not just one leader, but a coalition of good leaders who are not afraid to make a right decision, especially when the idea needed to make the right decision comes from their critics or inferiors. My faith teaches me not to lose hope that the same president who got us into these turbulent waters can be used by Providence to also be the captain that steers us out. And so it remains my prayer that his next three years will be so good as to make the last three years a laughable memory, and I pray this happens while the public's anger remains lower than its apathy. God bless Malawi.