An independent thought

We celebrated, or rather, we commemorated Independence Day on Monday, July 6. But is it enough to celebrate independence because it is a milestone or because we feel contented to have achieved something? What, I wonder, have we achieved worth celebrating about? Is freeing ourselves from the shackles of colonialism and imperialism enough cause for celebrating?

All that we managed to do was to supplant white colonialists with black ones, our own, whose only major positive point is that they can speak the language without necessarily speaking our language.

Just recently, we (or rather, government) celebrated ourselves senseless for coming second to Qatar in terms of economic growth in the world, yet the level of poverty among our people falls short of being outright immoral — 45 years after independence.

It is fashionable, more especially in the recent past, for people (on second thoughts, government as well) to survive by handouts. If that was not vindication that our people are far from independent — economically or otherwise — then I don’t know what will.

In football, our so-called national sport, for instance, about two years before independence, on October 15, 1962, we suffered the indignity of loosing 12-0 at the Rangeley Stadium — now Kamuzu Stadium — to Ghana. Yeah, Ghana might have been (and still are) the heavyweights of the game on the continent, but about 47 years on, we are still clueless about what to with the game.

Malawi remains something still of an enigma (a fact which some quarters, no less administrators of the game, celebrate gleefully). The Flames are a team that can embarrass continental champion in Egypt and a few months later, they are humiliated by the lesser fancied Burkina Faso.

How can we celebrate independence to its fullest when our electricity supplier, Escom, still functions with efficiency of a disaffected pre-colonial civil service? If the electricity is not tinkered by a notorious monkey, then plain insolence and cluelessness by someone who is supposed to know befuddles the system altogether.

As we celebrated our independence, some parts of the country were in darkness because some system is up to its habit of breaking down.

It beats me when we claim we are independent when the water system we are using in the cities remains pre-colonial. We have allowed ourselves to witness decay before our eyes and celebrate it.

Yes, the opposition has been blamed for shooting down this loan and that loan that could have rectified the water system, the electricity supply and all that load of tosh. Oh yeah, but that was only in the last five years; we have had 40 years behind us during which time the best things we did for ourselves was to sing praises for our leaders who only capitalised on the historical inevitabilities.

We have leaders, who, 45 years after independence, can’t entertain diversity of thought; leaders who don’t know how to walk away from their failures.

Some independence for sure!