Malawi: Of dictators and change management

THE TWISTER

BY BRIAN LIGOMEKA

I am among those who dispute some of the propositions by the originator of the concept of natural selection, Charles Darwin. However, I love one of the statements he made on issues of managing change. Darwin once hinted:“It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones who are most responsive to change.”

I support this view because the world is changing and we need to keep on changing. Surely, The Twister of 1990, is not the Twister of 2000 and neither is he the Twister of 2011. So many things have changed including my lifestyle. While in the past I took pleasure in writing about my own romantic episodes including the one which saw my beautiful wife pacifying two high school girls who were fighting each other near my house, not knowing that the two lasses were actually fighting for me, I no longer take pleasure in recounting those incidents. I find them inappropriate episodes because I do not want my daughter who is at the university and my son who is in high school to be reading about my youth-hood scandals. 

Since as human beings, we are changing and everything else in our environment is changing, Darwin was spot on when he said that it is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones that are most responsive to change.

Issues of change are very crucial amongst leaders because most of the time they spend their time managing change which involve managing people, systems, resources and interests for the greater good of the organization or even the nation as they forge ahead amidst various challenges and threats.

The paradox of life is that while everything else changes, people simply like others and systems to change while they remain the same. Just imagine recently, MCP president John Tembo was all over the place condemning President Bingu wa Mutharika, labelling him a dictator for expelling Vice President Joyce Banda from DPP and excluding her from his cabinet. People were clapping hands for Tembo’s boldness to denounce Bingu’s alleged dictatorial tendencies. The veteran politician urged Mutharika to adhere to tenets of democracy.

Then, just few days later, the same Tembo who was labelling Mutharika a dictator, faced with the similar situation, did the same thing. His party expelled its Secretary General Chris Daza because of his (Daza’s) mere statement that he will gun for MCP presidency in the run up to 2014 polls. Going by their despotic track-records, I am not sure who deserves to be crowned the worst dictator between Bingu and Tembo and who should label each other dictator.

The point I am illustrating is that we are excited to press for change when that change affects others, while as individuals, we resist change. There is bad news for dictators who resist change. The bad news is from Iran's Ambassador to Oman Hossein Noushabadi who says the 21st century will witness the fall of dictators all over the world.

 “The second decade of the 21st century is to witness the end of the lives of the world's dictators,” Noushabadi was quoted by the media at the weekend

The diplomat told the international media that the fall of the dominos began with the ouster of Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and continued with the removal of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's ousted dictator. The Iranian envoy explained that this movement will continue with Ali Abdullah Saleh's escape from Yemen.

Unfortunately, when dictators are intoxicated with power and wallowing with in wealth whose sources they can’t explain, their ears become deaf and eyes turn blind. Nobody can preach to them about the need to embrace political change.

In management and leadership studies, there are numerous theories explaining why people oppose change. Simply put, people are creatures of habit, who naturally incline to fit themselves into a set routine. This perhaps explains why most dictators if they had their way would have loved to die while in power; or alternatively hand over the mantle of power to their wives, brothers and cousins while on their death bed.

It is claimed Egyptian ousted leader Hosni Mubarak had a political blueprint  in which he planned to handover power to his son Gamal while Muammar Gaddafi wanted to be succeeded by his son Saif. Even here in Malawi, the trends are the same. If you think I am lying, let someone challenge me, apart from being Muluzi’s son, what qualification, experience, track-record, political stamina does Atupele have to be harbouring presidential ambitions? What has he done as individual that is worth pointing at that makes him qualify to be the next president? If he was just a mere MP, and not Muluzi’s son, could he be making noise about presidency? The same questions go to Peter Mutharika. If he were not Bingu’s kid brother, would he be a politician harbouring presidential ambitions?

I am not against Atupele and Peter’s ambitions, but sometimes we need to put trends and issues in their correct context. My assumption is that these two have found themselves on the presidential campaign trails because of their father and brother respectively just as Gamal and Saif are in hot soup because of their fathers.

Today, Gaddafi, Mubarak, Ben Ali, Laurent Gbagbo are out of power facing the music because of their failure to manage and accept change as dictated by the democratic wishes of their people. Their bothers and children are also in huge messes because of their entry into politics through the window of bloody kinship instead of using the open door of democracy, choice and fair competition. 

Unfortunately, dictators, never learn the mistakes of their peers. When one dictator with his relations is being ousted by angry citizens through mass protests, another dictator in his myopia assumes that his military and police can prevent regime change. I assume those assumptions emanate from a mental disease called malignant narcissism. This chronic ailment offers dictators false hopes of survival from the strong winds of change. Gaddafi, Mubarak, Ben Ali, Gbagbo are all being haunted because of malignant narcissism, which prevented them from accepting change.

I am just asking myself as to where would the wind of change blow to after dislodging dictators in the Arab world.

Malawi:Of people power and cabinet

THE TWISTER

BY BRIAN LIGOMEKA

Sometimes, I tend to concur with what Sir Winston Churchill, a former British statesman once said: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

This famous quote highlights that there is actually no such thing as a perfect form of government. Other systems such as socialism, autocracies, monarchies and theocracies are unpopular in many countries because they produce less desirable results than democracy in terms of the promotion of good governance, transparency and accountability.

However, by looking at the way some leaders conduct themselves in democracies I agree with Churchill’s assertion that democracy is also bad, only that it is the least flawed of the bunch. The recent protests and the death of 19 people during anti-government protests certainly show that Malawi democracy is failing the citizenry. It seems we actually vote for our own self-destruction by electing professional liars, stubborn and self-seeking politicians to rule and represent us.

We elect politicians who when they are intoxicated with power waste their energies and time enacting stupid laws just to please their political masters instead of pleasing the people who put them into office. Our problem is that instead of voting for patriotic politicians who have long-term vision for our nation, we vote for those that offer the best handouts and those who promise a long list of lies.

Because of democracy’s emphasis on the majority’s principle, some political hotheads forget that good governance calls for compromise, accommodation, and recognition of differences, which will always be there so long as diversities of mankind exist.

Let me now hail President Bingu wa Mutharika for trimming his cabinet as demanded by the masses who took it to the streets on July 20. The ‘lean’ cabinet shows that the loud voice of the July 20 protestors has been heard.

As I indicated on this column some months ago, it seems Mutharika is a political twister. The justification for describing him so lies in the way he reinforces his grip on power through a strategy of coercion. I am talking about the way he hires and retires members of his cabinet oftentimes, by defying people’s expectations.

The rumour mill has it that when he ascended to the throne in 2004, he discarded a cabinet which his predecessor, Atcheya proposed. He hired a cabinet of his own. Even after being re-elected in 2009, he surprised everyone else by leaving out of cabinet politicians who campaigned for him, by hiring new political comers.

During this week’s cabinet reshuffle, he has dropped some key ministers which were his staunch loyalists. We all know how one Ken Kandodo defended the zero-deficit budget with all his valour while Grain Malunga absorbed all the criticisms on fuel shortages. Anna Kachikho defended the government when local polls were being postponed while Etta Banda was justifying why it was necessary to expel the British High Commissioner to Malawi. What’s the prize for their gallant work during various crises? Exclusion from cabinet!

We have our own opinions on the new cabinet. Some are asking themselves: “Why is Kandodo out of the cabinet? Why has Bingu dropped Malunga, Mayi Kachikho, Etta Banda and Eunice Kazembe? Why?

Regardless of whatever answer you speculate, these politicians are out of cabinet. Simply put, the president has a prerogative to hire and fire.

Bingu’s strategy reminds me of Filipo Maria, the last of the Visconti dukes of Milan in the fifteenth-century Italy. History has it that he deliberately did the opposite of what everyone expected of him.

Filipo during his reign could call a servant and shower him with praises, and the servant would immediately start building castles in the air believing that his promotion was imminent, but lo, few days after showering him with praises, Filipo would then start treating him with extreme scorn.

Fearing the worst, the servant would start fearing to meet Filipo, but to the surprise of everyone the duke would start treating him well again. After weeks of treating him well as a valuable servant, he would just out of the blue rebuke him and kick him out of the castle.

The lesson was that best way to handle Filipo was to avoid assuming that you know what he wants or trying to deduce what will please him. What one had to do to survive was just to dance to his tunes of unpredictability.

A third century BC Chinese philosopher Han Fei Tzu once intimated on unpredictability: “The enlightened ruler is so mysterious that he seems to dwell no where, so inexplicable that no one can seek him. He reposes in non-action above and his ministers tremble down.” The point is unpredictability is one of the successful strategies in politics, if not used excessively and abusively.

One strategist once observed: “Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people’s actions. Your predictability gives them a sense of control. Turn the tables: Be deliberately unpredictable. Behaviour that seems to have no consistency or purpose will keep them off balance and they will wear themselves out trying to explain your moves.”

I think Mutharika’s cabinet reshuffles can best be described as the being based on the use of coercive power.

“Of all bases of power available to man, the power to hurt others is often most often used, most often condemned and most difficult to control…the state relies on its military to intimidate nations, or even its own citizens. Business rely upon the control of economic resources….while the church threatens individuals with loss of grace,” that’s D. Kipnis speaking in his book Powerholders on coercive power.

So just as the church threatens its followers with loss of grace, the president uses his “prerogative to hire and fire” to decide who is supposed to be in the cabinet.

It is therefore a waste of time trying to figure out why some key figures have been dropped from cabinet because there will be so many political hypothesis generated, but the Constitution simply says that the hiring and firing of cabinet ministers is the president prerogative, and hence nobody should assume that he or she is a life-minister.

Ex-ministers who are angry and unhappy over their dismissals from cabinet, should just take solace in the words of wisdom from Baltsar Gracian (1601-1658): “Do not commit yourself to anybody or anything, for that is to be a slave, a slave to every man. Independence is more precious than the gift in exchange for which independence is lost. You should prefer many people to depend upon you, rather than that you should depend upon single person. Above all, keep yourself free of commitments and obligations – they are the device of another to get you into his power.”