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| Columns |
| Backbencher |
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by
Anonymous, 20 January 2007
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07:41:50
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Shall there be happy ending to charity?
Honourable Folks, there is one good thing the privileged ladies who have shared the presidential palace with our presidents have in common—the desire to share with the less privileged rural poor, especially women, orphans and the elderly.
From Cecilia Tamanda Kadzamira, the lucky lady our first President Kamuzu Banda proudly addressed as “Mama” in public, to the two First Ladies—Anne and Shanil—our second President Bakili Muluzi separately brought with him to Sanjika and now the incumbent First Lady Ethel Mutharika, charity work has been a worthwhile pastime.
Mama Kadzamira was patron of Chitukuko Cha Amai Mmalawi (CCAM), founded in 1985 as a department in the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC).
Anne Muluzi registered her Freedom Foundation Trust on June 20, 1997 which Shanil inherited after officially assuming the status of First Lady in 1999. Her husband unveiled the Freedom Foundation Trust plague at Sanjika in July 2000 and worked hard to sell the trust as Shanil’s own initiative.
Whether it was a result of political arm-twisting or a genuine recognition of tremendous charity work, in 2003 Shanil became a proud recipient of an honorary doctorate by the Mzuzu University for reaching out to needy Malawians through her Freedom Foundation Trust.
A year later, Shanil ceased to be First Lady at the expiry of her husband’s tenure of office, giving way to the new First Lady Ethel Mutharika who launched the Ethel Mutharika Foundation with a fund-raising tea party on October 13, 2004.
Shanil probably best encapsulated the common goal for charity by the lucky ladies at the presidential palace when she said on January 13, 2000 that it is meant to help the needy improve living standards in their families and “thus bring hope, dignity and genuine freedom to them.”
Yes, they say poverty is a violation of human rights and our political freedom—which the lucky men of the presidential palace champion—hasn’t emancipated us from the bondage of excruciating poverty and deprivation. I guess the people of Malawi shall remain indebted to the lucky ladies for engaging in charity work to help the most needy and vulnerable in our midst.
That said, the charity work by the lucky ladies of the presidential palace has so far also shared another thing in common—a sad ending. CCAM left an impression that it was one of the tools the Kamuzu regime used to force women rally behind an oppressive dictatorial regime. Its image was made worse when Kamuzu’s secret service bombed the house of Zambia-based journalist Mkwapatira Mhango, killing him and eight other members of his family. Reason? He wrote articles very critical of CCAM.
By the time the Kamuzu regime crumbled, CCAM was virtually dead. Admarc reclaimed Kwenengwe Farm in Thyolo and people in Lilongwe shared the CCAM garden near Civo Stadium. Mama Kadzamira found the organisation too hot to serve as a patron and she has kept her distance ever since.
Likewise, Shanil’s Freedom Foundation Trust was perceived by the Mutharika regime as a political machinery of UDF and, at the peak of the tension between Mutharika and his predecessor, Muluzi, armed police stormed the offices of the trust, claiming they were searching for guns. Nothing about the trust has been heard since then.
This experience has left me with a craving for a happy ending to the Ethel Mutharika Foundation. But being caught loading subsidised fertiliser in a State House truck at an Admarc depot in Salima in the night isn’t exactly the way to develop the plot for a charity story with a happy ending.
I expected Madam Mutharika to use her name, the name of her husband and the ties the First Couple have with the rich and the privileged to raise funds for her charity work.
But what I read in the papers wasn’t encouraging. It appears the Foundation somewhat got government fertiliser coupons—a privilege no other charity organisation enjoyed—and used a government vehicle to buy fertiliser at a time when the rest of us were retiring to bed.
This can’t be right. Government had already put in place a mechanism through which all the deserving needy—including those targeted by the Ethel Mutharika Foundation— could access the fertiliser which was heavily subsidised by the taxpayer. Having the foundation acquire the subsidised fertiliser for its farm with the intention of distributing the harvest to the needy in future wasn’t simply part of the declared plan.
And the Ethel Mutharika Foundation happens to exist under a regime built on a higher moral ground where good governance reigns supreme and the policy of zero-tolerance for corruption has seen others entangled in the coupon scam end up in police custody. Won’t there be a statement to condemn what happened in Salima?
— Feedback: backbencher2005@yahoo.com
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