Blantyre Water Board insulting clients

It’s hard to like Escom unless you are working there. I suppose even some of the employees flinch at the very thought of working there. In the sport of throwing expletives in Escom’s direction, it should rank as the only occasion when Malawians leave aside their tribes, political choices, football clubs they support and unite for that one cause.

The lot that moan at Escom’s supposed legendary incompetence is largely an overindulged middle class and usually male. For the common folk, unless the maize mill is not running, they couldn’t care less.

In all of this, however, I have found reasons to admire Escom despite its limited means. I cannot remember the last time Escom kept me in the dark for two days or more. It is usually a few hours. Again, Escom often warns consumers about impending blackouts by publishing load shedding schedules which help one to plan their day. Of course, Escom reserves the right to disappoint, so once in a while it throws the schedule out the window and does what Escom knows best.

For most people, the reason we need electricity are usually as mundane as charging the phone, watching TV or listening to music. We lose next to nothing without electricity.

Some utility organisations, however, have been spared of the sort of flack that Escom cops. Take, for instance, the water boards and I am talking about Blantyre Water Board (BWB) in particular. When I last lived in Lilongwe about two years ago, water was not such a big deal. Granted, we had hiccups once in a while but overall we coped. I understand Lilongwe Water Board has of late fallen on hard times and it is failing to supply water properly to residents. I hear that is all due to the hazards of overpopulation and lack of foresight.

Early this year, as Escom and other water boards were lamenting that El Nino would affect their operations, BWB issued one of the most carelessly worded statements I have ever read when it declared it didn’t envisage such challenges. But as anyone who has lived in Blantyre long enough will testify, BWB’s response was vanity than reality. BWB and water shortages are hand in glove.

It is not uncommon for some townships in the city to have dry taps for a week without explanation or apology from BWB. As I am writing this, my area has gone for three days without water. No warning. No explanation. And no apology is forthcoming.

The more I read BWB’s slogan about ‘Water is life’, the more I am convinced the board is either intentionally raising the middle finger at its clients or it is just clueless. If the board knows water is life, how does it expect people survive for a week without water? And in what should be counted as one of the most misguided decision, the board had the gumption to raise tariffs on a product it barely supplies! What cheek!

It’s time the board stopped insulting its clients by clinging to that heartless slogan. Escom saw the folly of its ways after some prodding from Cama and it tweaked its slogan; it’s not too late for BWB to follow suit.

Malawi’s metaphor of falling presidents

Of late, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe seems to have developed a habit of stumbling and falling. In February last year, the nonagenarian stumbled and fell at a Harare airport, to much mirth and pity in equal measure for the nonagenarian.

If that fall was dismissed as a blip, such doubts were cast aside a few months later—in October—when he stumbled again in New Dheli, but he had Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to thank for breaking his fall.

A combination of old age and almost 15 years of incessantly fighting opposition both at home and abroad can wear down any man. He can, you might even say, be forgiven for the occasional fall.

Malawian presidents, on the other hand, seem to have perfected the art of falling in public dating from the latter days of Kamuzu Banda to the present day rule of President Peter Mutharika. In fact, the stumble and fall of sitting Malawian presidents—at least three of them—reads like a poignant metaphor of the state of their nation and, as it has happened in the past two occasions, it has turned to be a harbinger of their own political fall.

For instance, as power was slipping from his grasp in the early 1990s, Kamuzu Banda famously stumbled and fell in Harare where he had gone for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). Malawi’s economy at the time was a shambles, his political foes were closing on him. It was as if the fall presaged his own political downfall a few years later; first, when the citadel of his power—one party system of government—was demolished during the June 93 referendum and, when he fell at the polls in May 1994, never to rise again.

Bakili Muluzi and Bingu wa Mutharika largely stayed on their feet, but the same cannot be said of the national economies or the political systems they presided over. They stumbled with such regularity they may as well have just stayed on the floor.

Joyce Banda’s obituary as a president was sealed when she had her own kiss with the ground—was it in Mzuzu?—after she also stumbled. It was a cruel metaphor of how she governed the country during two uneventful, but wasted years. She stumbled in her speeches (claiming rather naively, among other gaffes, that she saw nothing wrong with receiving stolen property), messed up the economy, lorded over the looting of public funds, seemed to be unsure of her own position (remember how she used to say donors have told me this and that) and how mightily she fell at the polls. That fall crystalised all her failures.

Now President Peter Mutharika has fallen as well. It is no laughing matter. The economy has fallen, the kwacha has fallen, the real value of the salaries has fallen, our morality has fallen (we are killing or threatening to kill each other for fun). And, oh, the water levels in Lake Malawi have fallen.

Look, anyone can fall, but in Malawi, that relationship with the ground seems to carry a double jeopardy. It is, perhaps, a warning for our leaders to do something about everything that has fallen, but they seldom pay attention to it. To their peril.

Mutharika fell, but he was swiftly helped to his feet by his attentive bodyguard. If only Mutharika’s fall and his being helped to his feet were the metaphor for Malawi’s fortunes, we would be the better for it.