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Museveni’s groping in the dark factor
Honourable Folks, when asked by BBC this week what he thought is the problem with Africa, His Excellency Yoweri Museveni, President of Uganda, answered: “The problem with Africa has been the way forward. People don’t get the way forward correct so they end up groping in the dark.”
Museveni’s groping-in-the-dark factor was applied broadly to include the textbook theory approach to the development of Africa adopted by Africa’s development partners who preach trade liberalisation and the demerits of subsidies while ensuring that farming Africa is shut out of the world market dominated by their own heavily subsidised farmers.
But for us in Malawi this is an issue for tomorrow when we go into serious commercial farming. Today, the immediate issue is to be able to grow enough food crops to feed ourselves. We are groping in the dark when, having been blessed with fresh Lake Malawi and the Shire River water running across the length of our fish-shaped country from Karonga to Nsanje, we’re still unable to do what the Egyptians did at the beginning of civilisation—tapping ground water for irrigation. In this 21st Century when people elsewhere on the globe are growing oranges the size of a baby’s head on rocks, we’re almost 100 percent dependant on erratic rains.
We are groping in the dark when, while bragging about being an agro-based economy, we’re unable to find alternatives to tobacco, the so-called Malawi’s green gold which nobody wants to smoke in these days of heavy anti-smoking campaign. Despite the perennial song we sing about agriculture being among the priority sectors which are allocated the lion’s share of the budget, our thinking for the smallholder farmer seems to end at providing starter packs. When they produce more maize than they can consume, the surplus fetches peanuts on the market as the unscrupulous middlemen—who include politicians—manipulate the principle of supply and demand to buy produce at below production costs and sell either abroad or to NFRA at huge profits.
It is groping in the dark when we all can see that the population of animals, chickens and fish is rapidly dwindling and yet we’re just sitting phwii without thinking about where our children will get their protein. Fancy, the number of malnourished children in Malawi going up instead of down in the 21st century when the rest of the world is struggling to manage obesity!
Folks, while I give credit to His Excellency President Bingu wa Mutharika for cracking the whip on corruption and pledging to spend within the budget, I wonder if all his lieutenants in Cabinet are working as hard as Bingu said they would. What became of the monthly performance assessment exercise? Has the Agriculture Ministry charted the way forward to ensure that agriculture can lead to a successful takeoff of agro-based industry? Or shall the collapsed textile industry and plundered Admarc remain the powerful symbols of the state of our agriculture as we grope in the dark?
On a lighter note, let Bakili Muluzi, chair of mighty UDF and Kamlepo Kalua, president of the so-called briefcase MDP, stop pulling each other’s leg because they both expropriated from the people “ownership” of the parties they are leading. Consequently, UDF and MDP supporters or members are denied control of the conventional instrument through which they can sponsor candidates for the presidential, parliamentary and local government polls.
The same applies to supporters or members of Aford, NDA, RP, Mgode and many other political parties which can be registered or de-registered, taken from one alliance to another or having their policies, structures or constitutions changed whenever it pleases their presidents or chairpersons. This is the kind of groping in the dark which has made people lose confidence in party politics and send to Parliament many independents this year.
Pity that some politicians like Brown Mpinganjira who de-registered NDA and went back to UDF after failing miserably in the 2004 elections fail to get the way forward correct and think they can lose their integrity and still enjoy blind support. Did you too hear him brag at a meeting Atcheya addressed in Bangwe last weekend that he’s back to make sure UDF gets all the seats in the Southern Region?
My foot! Just how can this person, who was described by the same Atcheya as a “thief” and “wachigololo” during the campaign period, think his comeback to UDF can make a difference? And how does Atcheya who was described by the same Mpinganjira during the campaign period as “corrupt” and “wicked”, hope to move an inch forward by this merger?
Muluzi has tried to build and consolidate UDF by dishing out money and swallowing up other parties that emerge in the South. This is quite an expensive way of buying cheap popularity. Either his rivals in the South deliberately set up fake parties so he can buy them out or they do so because they have a problem with Muluzi’s style of leadership. Either way, I don’t see how these breakaways can make a genuine comeback just because rich Muluzi has bought them like cabbages.
President Mutharika is a typical example. His United Party was bought like a drumhead cabbage but Muluzi is just realising now that Mutharika still has no respect for the so-called political government Muluzi so much believed in. If I were Muluzi, I would try to save UDF by changing the style of leadership instead of filling up positions in its NEC with buddies who have corrupt cases to answer.
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