Mr President, in Malawi, hyenas exist in both high and low places, arrest them all

In Malawi, just in the past two weeks forty eight people have been arrested.

Sixteen were students from the Chancellor College, the Polytechnic contributed fourteen, and the Kamuzu College of Nursing’s quota was seventeen, all for protesting the thoughtless and cruel fee hike which anyone who enjoyed free or heavily subsidised university education has no moral high ground from which to defend such a burden on other generations.

Unique among the forty eight, sort of the icing on the cake if you want, is the ‘hyena’ man from Nsanje who has shot to overnight fame, or rather to infamy, thanks to an interview he granted the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

One does not have to be a wise man from the east to connect the dots and unearth the overwhelming evidence that all these arrests share a common denominator.

And this is the fact that in all these arrests – under someone’s wise and pragmatic leadership now duly enhanced with a honorary degree; the inept but overzealous Malawi Police have been merely arresting symptoms instead of the leadership grappling with the underlying causes.

Since the question of University Fees is so obvious, and I am hopeful sanity and unselfishness will soon prevail among our pharaohs whose children are mostly educated abroad with our taxes, my focus is on other things cultural and criminal yet to be arrested.

My cultural entry point is the ‘hyena’ man who has been de-virginising our girls under the archaic and disgusting tradition of kuchotsa fumbi.

Talking to the BBC…. sorry, scrap that; gloating to the BBC, he claimed to have had 279 virgins at his disposal, without any protection whatsoever, all in the name of ‘preserving our culture and traditions’.

He even went further to insult all of humanity that all the girls that suffered this indignity were grateful; congratulating him the morning after, because he had taken them to ‘heaven and back’ with his wizardry.

What a psychopath!

Custodians, the supposed custodians of our culture are traditional chiefs. And chiefs, whenever a president or any political leader comes calling in their yards, always have long wish lists for the general public plus a deep begging bowl for their greedy selves.

The last recorded and televised interaction between a president of the Republic and a chief, was at TA Kabudula’s elevation. The Chief made a speech, and the president also had his turn.

I do not want to bore you to death with the mundane stuff that passed for ‘speeches’, I will just get straight to the point.

Anyone who has watched the BBC Video clip featuring the ‘hyena’, and happened to listen to President Arthur Peter Mutharika’s advice for the newly elevated chief, now understands the folly of electing, with all due respect, matchona – never mind how seemingly educated – to govern Malawi.

The president’s crucial advice to the new Chief, to deliver which costed us tax-payers millions ferrying him and his hangers-on to Kabudula’s headquarters for the function, was that the new chief should bar the opposition from conducting rallies in his area.

That was all. Yes, that was the developmental advice that his emptiness delivered to the newly elevated chief.

That nonsense Ladies and Gentlemen, was what our esteemed citizen number one considered presidential advice.

Come on Mr President, you can’t be serious!

You mean, someone from London comes to Malawi, tracks down an HIV positive fella having raw sex with maidens, manages to interview him, and identifies our culture as the culprit; and you Sir, leave the State House – surrounded by thousands of security agents who should be safeguarding albinos, us and our property – arrive at Kabudula Headquarters to elevate yet another custodian of our culture, and all you are worried about is the opposition coming to conduct a rally after your departure?

Is everything fine upstairs Sir?

This may sound rude, but I have to ask: apart from what this President may have read on Wikipedia, how much does he really know about us?

The point being, with that clip making rounds on mainstream and social media, with that hyena man making us all look like the fools we are to all English-speaking people in world, with you Sir having your respect dented because some people out there are not ruling out the distant possibility that at some point or another, you too may have happily “served” as a hyena; all you can advise a Chief is to chase away the opposition?

Let’s face it my colleagues, if his excellency really knew us, he would have known that Chiefs – with respect to:

• challenges like abuse of girls and women,

• the many instances of girls dropping out of school to get married to older men,

• issues of girls becoming mothers at the age of twelve,

• the sick practice of property grabbing,

• the ordeal of rape victims being afraid to come out; and

• other archaic customs and traditions they lord over,

are the biggest part of the problem.

Therefore granted an opportunity to address a chief, any one who really knows Malawians, would worry about the real issues above, and not an opposition rally happening in his wake.

Lest I too be accused of arresting the symptom of a more deep-rooted ailment rather than the cause, I will go on to add that the underlying cause of where we are, lies in the way we choose leaders from councillors to parliamentarians to presidents, who then have the prerogative of appointing a whole lot of incompetents as ministers, heads of parastatals including the university council – the manufacturers of the current university fees crisis.

The day we learn and start thinking more patriotically, as opposed to nepotistically in our choices, is the day Malawi will shift from that grouping of poorest countries, which – apart from Malawi- the rest have been under civil strife or some other calamity.

To conclude, arresting the students will not make them afford the university fees. No.

Locking up the one ‘hyena’ will not protect our maidens from HIV and other STIs the hyenas carry and spread. Nope.

Our problems, shame and disgrace will only end the day we begin separating the sheep from the hyenas in our midst when electing leaders, at all levels.

And lest we forget, the cashgate ‘hyenas’ being shielded by His Excellency ought to have been the ones arrested in these past two weeks, and not the students.

Fact is: as opposed to the wild hyena-men hunt which his excellency has commissioned, to be complimented soon with legislation, for the cashgate “hyenas” that he is breeding, wining and dining with, we already have laws in place that make stealing from the public purse a crime.

We have an institution- the ACB – that is supposed to quickly bring the cash gate hyenas to book, but yet, but yet, the Auditor General’s MK236 million report is now gathering dust.

My parting question therefore is: with respect to this new piece of legislation that the president is talking about, what purpose is it going to serve when the MK236 billion Cashgate investigation has more than proved that the president lacks the backbone to tackle law breakers?

I rest my case.