Why has Malawi leader lost direction?

THE TWISTER BY BRIAN LIGOMEKA

I am filing this entry from the Zambian capital, Lusaka. Here in Zambia it has not been easy for me to defend the decisions made by our leader - President Bingu wa Mutharika. As a patriotic Malawian, I have been trying all I can do to defend him.

My host took me to task to explain why Mutharika who started very well as an economic engineer has ended up being a dictator. As a Malawian, I have vehemently rejected that my president is a dictator; unfortunately my host can’t buy my explanation.

“Don’t argue just for the sake of arguing, for a country which over the past forty years or so have been depending on donor subventions for its budgetary support and development expenditure, surely expelling a British envoy shows that someone is either a dictator or is becoming arrogant and senile,” argued my host.

I rubbished his opinion by telling him that his view was out of order and lacked substance.

“Get the truth from me. Mutharika is not an autocrat but rather a great Pan Africanist of modern times. Just read his latest book, The African Dream: From Poverty to Prosperity, you will understand what I mean. His decisions which you view as autocratic or arrogant are pointers of his belief in Pan Africanism,” I lectured to him in defence of our president.

He was not convinced and beckoned me to his laptop and said to me: “Just read one of his latest decisions and you will understand why I say your old man has lost direction.”

I read the piece on one of the websites of the online newspapers and I was speechless. The article was about a Commission of Inquiry which Mutharika has instituted to investigate the root cause of the wrangle between Police Chief Peter Mukhito and university lecturers that has led to the closure of Chancellor College and the Polytechnic.

I was wordless because everyone knows why the two colleges have been closed. The lecturers are demanding an apology from Mukhito and an assurance that their academic freedom as enshrined in the Constitution is guaranteed. Period.

Surely, you don’t need to waste taxpayers’ money to investigate why the two colleges were closed because even my kindergarten kid knows what led to the stand off between the police IG and the lecturers.

I agreed with my Zambian host that by setting a commission of inquiry to investigate the issue when in fact Mutharika had already commented on the issue several times at public podiums show that he has lost strategic political direction.

 “Tell me, is he admitting to the Malawi nation that all his comments on the issue of academic stand-off were out of pure arrogance and ignorance? Having commented on the issue from a point of total ignorance, has he now come to his senses and this is why he wants to know the truth through the findings of the Commission of Inquiry?” my Zambian friend quizzed me.

“Your utterances are tantamount to sedition in my country, so watch your tongue,” I warned him.

Conceding defeat and the fact that Mutharika seems to have lost direction as evidenced by his setting of Commission of Inquiry, all I said was: “Most African leaders when they are serving their last terms behave in a funny way, while in their own eyes they see themselves as star performers. I think that is in line with what Lord Acton said that power corrupts.”

Indeed, for the stand off to come to an end, Mukhito should simply apologise to the lecturers and all injunctions and court cases should be withdrawn, pronto. The article first appeared in The Daily Times on May 26, 2011