In exactly 319 days, the nation of Malawi will turn 50. This is no small milestone, but it will be a shame if it is seen merely as an historical event worth celebrating, for a strong case can be made that such an occasion is also an opportunity worth seizing. Sunday, July 6, 2014 should not just be a day for Malawians to look back with reflection on their country's history since its independence in 1964, but also a day for Malawians to look forward with singular resolve and purpose on their country's future over the next half century. We must ask ourselves as a nation: what is our collective dream of the country we want Malawi to be by the time she turns 100 in the year 2064? Peering that far ahead into the future may strain our eyes, but it must be done if we are going to be deliberate and standing shoulder to shoulder in our nation-building.
Now any journey into a destiny worth reaching must begin with an honest assessment of both the national blessings we've inherited and the mess we are in; a humble acceptance that we the people are responsible for our country; and a heroic defiance that declares this current state of affairs as unacceptable. But honesty, humility, and heroism all seem to be in such short supply these days that it can seem difficult to know where to begin such a momentous journey together. One reason for this apparent shortage of honesty, humility, and heroism is that we often look for it in the wrong place. We look for these qualities in our politicians when all the while it is the people in the streets who know what the country is really like and who daily dream of what the country ought to be. The people may not know how to get to the promised land, but they know that they are still in the wilderness. They also know that one of the first of many key ingredients that needs to be gotten right if we are ever going to stop going around in circles is choosing the kind of leadership that will set us off on the right course. However, choosing the kind of leadership we need is not the same as choosing the leader we want.
To be sure, there is an election in nine months, and our thoughts are tempted to think of this merely as a chance to choose between Arthur, Atupele, Joyce, and Lazarus. It is also noteworthy that there has never been an election in this country in which we have been so fortunate as to have such exceptional individuals to choose our president from. When all the options in the race are as formidable as this, the voice of the people matters so much more than when the stakes are low and the options are inconsequential. But in making this all-important choice, we must not be as naive as we have been in the past to believe that one leader is going to be enough of a silver bullet to set our country on a course that will keep us focused on giving those who will be alive in fifty years a better country than this we live in. Instead, we must decide on the kind of leadership we need and the kind of leadership we are determined to always demand, regardless of which leader is seeking office in this election or in any of the next nine elections. And we must have the courage and wisdom to choose that kind of leadership not just for the country, but also for each constituency, because what Malawi needs is a sea change of leadership both in government and opposition, an army of good leaders if you will. This is important firstly for the sustainability of the dream we pursue for Malawi, for even if we get the choice of president right, any progress made towards our dreamland will always be in danger of being sabotaged either by the same president in their second term (sound familiar?) or by the next president. But if we get our choice of local councillors and parliamentarians right, then our dream has a chance of survival, for these representatives have a chance of outlasting the presidency. More importantly, making the right leadership choice across the political spectrum is also important because of the nature and magnitude of the seismic reforms that will inevitably have to be enacted over Malawi's second fifty year act.
So what kind of reforms are these for which we must endeavor to get the right kind of leadership across the board? Doubtless the country has suffered multiple organ failure, and the reforms needed to resuscitate Malawi are many. In fact, I believe there are at least seven areas of reform that hold the key to our nation's transformation, but there is one that deserves special attention because it strikes me as the least obvious one. I speak of Historical Reform, a new way of looking at our history. As a nation we generally have a bad habit of looking at our country's past with nostalgia, for we see the past as a time when things were better than they are now. The result is that any negative elements of the past, no matter how painful or consequential, we tend to bury and not confront. This may seem an unfairly broad generalization, and it is fair to say that it is less true of millennials born after 1980. Even so, there is a sense in the air that we tend to make the misguided conclusion that forgiving the past means forgetting it, and so what we deliberately choose to not remember collectively is often repeated. Bakili Muluzi was being more insightful than political when he accused Malawians of the self-maledictory malady of "kukonda kuyiwala". But we have to question whether we can move into a new future without confronting the past and ensuring that our collective unhealed wounds from the past are not carried forward to poison the future. And our wounds cannot heal if we keep on insisting on forgetting and burying the past. After all, the key sign that your wound has recovered is when you are able to remember the pain without reliving or revenging it. So the country needs help remembering, because it is not a habit that comes easy or natural for us.
We used to have the ability to recall and name our collective sins and pain publicly, like in 1914 and 1964 when we named colonialism as oppressive and painful, and even put dates in our calendar to remember that pain together as a nation. But we do not have that ability anymore. It was taken from us. Thirty years of state sponsored propaganda from 1964 to 1994 did that to us, for in that time we were conditioned to accept the version of history being fed to us instead of being allowed to remember history as it really happened. We were told that John Chilembwe was a prophet who foretold the coming of our nation's Messiah in the form of Kamuzu Banda, and so we were not permitted to remember or renounce the violent acts Chilembwe instigated, such as the beheading of William Jervis Livingstone whose head Chilembwe impaled on a pole he had standing next to him while he preached at his church on Sunday, January 24, 1915. Nor were we allowed to remember or repeat Chilembwe's many acts of bravery and compassion by which he acquired a quality education to be used in pursuing the interests of his country above his own. Malawi's history is rich with a deep wisdom, but that wisdom is most fertile in the dark soils we refuse to remember, and we are now in need of help. We need songs composed, movies made, plays acted, books published, curriculum developed, events commemorated, and memoirs written and made required reading about all the good, the bad, and the ugly past of our country. We are privileged to be living at a time when many of the custodians and makers of our history are still alive, but it won't stay like this forever. These libraries must not be allowed to be buried without record. Where are the biographies of John Tembo, Gwanda Chakuamba, or Mama C. Tamanda Kadzamira? Where are the biographies of the people who fought for our independence alongside Kamuzu Banda? Where are the plays and stories about the framers of our constitution? Where are the memoirs of the people who were imprisoned without trial during the one party era? Where are the days and events for remembering the dark night of Malawi's one state rule and celebrating the people who shined like stars in the midst of that dark tunnel? Is it not a sad indictment of our pretentious view and collective neglect of our history and its makers that Michael-Fredrick Paul Sauka died both penniless and unknown, despite the patriotism by which he employed his artistry in the composition of our country's beautiful and prayerful national anthem? Is it not symptomatic of our contempt for historical integrity that we stomach the casual changing of our bank notes, our flag, and the names of our national monuments (do we even have any?). We even stomached the blatant change of the date on which our former President died, all to suit the narrative of a few political opportunist desperate to cover up their treasonous tracts.
We have a rich past to reconcile ourselves to, but as I heard Felix Nyika say one time, we cannot have reconciliation without truth. But here I must add that the truth we need to confront is about ourselves, not others, for the past is not just what happened to us, but what we ourselves did. The past is not a story of our struggle against some villains in power, for in the end there are no pure villains or heroes among us since the thread of an immense potential for both good and evil runs through all our souls. The leaders we've had so far have not been monsters, but humans reflecting all the same human flaws we all have and without which they would not have been in power for long. A character flaw in any leader is only tolerated by the character flaws in the followers. So we must begin to see how our history is really a story of our struggle against the villains we have thus far seen in ourselves for having given our peers, our fellow countrymen, and our brothers permission to rule us badly. That history must neither be invented nor forgotten; it must instead be recorded and remembered so that the good we wish to pass on to our children may be preserved for public celebration, while the bad we wish to denounce may be preserved for public reflection. On this journey into a new future, we need the kind of courageous leadership that will provide the opportunity for us as a nation to tag and identify all our luggage from the past, and to separate the luggage we need to take with us into the next half century from that which we must leave behind. But this means all the foolish talk about forgetting the past must end. After all, there can be no dream where there is no memory. This is because our best dreams of the future are both innovative improvements of our best memories and imaginative negations of our worst memories of the past. In short, we cannot change the course of our nation's future history while we have a wrong and narrow view of it's past history. So come out into the light and tell us the bright and dark past you remember about Malawi's first 50 years, because hidden in your memory are the raw materials needed for painting a portrait of the country we must now start dreaming of waking up in on July 6, 2064.
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