Roadmap for the future

Roadmap for the future
By Pacharo Felix Munthali
Tomorrow never comes. For today’s today, is yesterday’s tomorrow. Today’s tomorrow becomes tomorrow’s yesterday. Tomorrow is complex. Crudely putting it, tomorrow never comes.

These are exceptions. Yet these are just indicators. They help in shaping how the other day the sun will rise will be like. They help is shaping the future. It is what one does today that the future becomes. Or his or her future bears. A future will always be the fruit of yesterday’s sweat.

It is only when history records are chalked and made erasing-proof, when it becomes really clear that there was yesterday. It is only a fool who forgets the existence of yesterday. Failing to keep every day’s records for future’s reference is even more than suicidal bombing of a priest while preaching.

It is the very same disease that Malawi, as a country, is battling against. The past records are sporadic. It seems people rely on oral history. This perhaps explains why the former president, Dr Bakili Muluzi accused Malawians saying Vuto la a Malawi simuchedwa kuyiwala (Malawians forget easily).

It’s considerably unfortunate. Yet true. Its not that the writings are not there, no. Writings are there; perhaps it is the will to read that is leaving us. By day our memories become depleted. Perhaps the recent elections have answered the former president. People have shown that they learn from past experience. It is only through the study of the past that the present can be shaped, they may have used oral means to trace the past, but they have demonstrated that.

The recent elections have been unprecedented. To many, they exuded “an extraordinary” landslide. This has been a common theme. To others, the elections were also a new symbol for the future. It is during this year’s elections that regional barriers were leveled. These barriers had been there since the thirteen plus million people populated country embraced principles of democracy some fifteen or so years ago.

Equally crucial, the elections were also the source of political embarrassment to political heavyweights. Many political barons wobbled and crumbled before their opponents. The election results were also the first ones in which the nation saw numbers of women joining the wagon of seemingly purpose-oriented women ballooning.

The elections were a mixed bag. There were myriad crucial issues addressed, grinding of regional barriers, rising in number of women Parliamentarians, falling of political landlords as well as the unprecedented gap between the winning candidate and the nearest opponent.

But the elections were historic too. They were a source of prophesy. The question with reference to the past is why did the opposition fell down with such a landslide defeat?

Prophesy
“These writers hate Bakili Muluzi,” scrambling with fellow students to read Political Index of The Nation in Chancellor College library, voice of one student aback, summersaults to the present.

“No, they don’t hate him. Only that truth hurts,” one student engrossed in the Political Index feature story, responds. It is in 2007.

On this day, the feature title is not only beautiful. It is bright too. A Beaultiful flame that kills. On the byline there is Mzati Nkolokosa. The central character is Dr Bakili Muluzi. Like a meandering yet smooth river the feature drinks us with the waters of a long political journey that Muluzi has seen. Unfortunately, it is a path to destruction.

Of Muluzi, the story with much easiness starts, “he is so attractive, an irresistible, like flame that attracts moths.” A pause…

Another line. “But it’s a flame that suffocates and all who doesn’t realize early enough die.” The long story starts. Those that associate with Muluzi, according to the story, suffocates and perishes with him.

Big Bullets is the first one in this story. The team has seen itself, after ascending from rags to Bakili’s riches, with a thump it collapsed. Today, as Malawi News reporter, Vincent Phiri had written recently, the players have gone to the extent of walking on foot after games.

The list is long. For Chakufwa Chihana the story is evident. The miseries of his Aford party are a remaining testimony. For the man himself, Nkolokosa wrote: “He died politically long before his physical death in 2006.” Then there is Khwauli Msiska. Now he tells Malawians that he has learnt from his past mistakes of moving the open bill.

For Gwanda Chakuamba it is evident how his story has ended. Falling down from a man who sometime back was expected to be the country’s president, his miscalculations through his association with Muluzi have gravely berried him. Perhaps, it is Tembo who has the latest story.

As a beautiful flame kills, in the same year there is also candle Burning in the storm. The writer is Bright Molande. His feature, simply ties up everything. The writer focuses on the working together of Tembo and Muluzi. But this is 2007, mind you.

In one paragraph, Molande writes, “Tembo is destroying himself together with MCP. He is seen to be mobilizing the aspirations of the party against development, against the needs of the people, the voters.”

Tembo has fought hard in Parliament. Seemingly relying on the allegations that his votes were stolen, he took that as gospel truth. With a frustrated Muluzi and his allies of easily influenced MPs in Parliament, John Tembo saw all this as an opportunity he cannot let go. In the process, he worked with Muluzi. His MCP party in the process got money from Muluzi.

Then there is working together cooperation that was never an alliance nor a coalition. Unfortunately, today MCP is licking its wounds as in tatters in numerical presence in Parliament has drastically reduced. UDF too is the shadow of its former self. But UDF seems to learn something.

Way ahead
The writings had been written years ago. Yet the events have written themselves too. With the ticking of the clock signaling the new period of elections coming, it is a reminder to the losers that they should not keep on complaining. The heavy defeats that UDF and MCP registered must the cornerstone on which the future must be cemented upon.

MCP currently is faced with internal squabbles. There is a group of young blood calling for Tembo to bow down. The former spokesperson of the party has so far paid dearly for the calls. He has been fired. John Tembo did the firing.

When asked, the MCP president says there is a way that is followed for the party to let the young ones to run it.

While MCP is engulfed in the internal unrest, UDF is quietly yet surely covering some miles. When Sam Mpasu and Friday Jumbe in 2007 publicly contradicted Muluzi, as Molande quotes them, “arguing that the collective position of the party was to focus on rebuilding the party,” it looked like they were against the big man.

Today UDF seems to have learnt some lessons. Bakili Muluzi himself has agreed that this is time to revitalize the party. As Molande had written in 2007, that was the time of rebuilding the party. Perhaps the disaster the party saw during the elections wouldn’t have been witnessed.

However, Bakili Muluzi has even gone a step ahead. He is calling for cooperation amongst the political players. The interests of the nation should be on the forefront, his message is clear.

New form of message
Dr Benjamin Mays once said that “the tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.” For some time the country has concentrated on politics, even at time when elections are long gone. This has had a bearing. Unfortunately, a negative one. Even if the government can have plans and goals, in some way they end up getting blurred in the process. This is why Muluzi’s message should be a call that our politicians must embrace. But is only when it is done with great sincerity that it can help in transforming the country.

Today the country like Mahatma Gandhi must strive at bringing forth the change it wants to see. Time is now. Political squabbles must go. Let the country soldier on to the land of prosperity.

There is need for patriotism amongst the politicians. The interests of the country should come first. In that way, as the country celebrates the emergence two important things, the change we want surely will be seen.

The increase in number of women and the grinding of regional barriers should surely go into history books as the turning point for the country. In countries like Rwanda, after seen bloody period of civil war, they changed their policy. They don’t identify one another as a Hutu or Tutsi. They see one another as Rwandans.

Malawi is surely following suit. It is a new roadmap for the future. The today’s sweat is tomorrow’s sweet. Though tomorrow never comes, but when the fruits shall be seen, we shall say tomorrow has come.