It’s a familiar song. A song that has been heard countless number of times. Sometimes you wonder if the score has any double bar lines at some point. Or perhaps, is it a song that will be sang to the eternity? Nobody knows, not even the singers themselves. This song has been sang for generation throughout the land. This land is Malawi. Malawi is one of the countries in the world which has embraced democracy and it’s still in its infancy stages with a promising future. According to Gaynor (2010), Malawi’s political atmosphere can potentially be described as “a complex mix of the old and the new.” This is to say the ongoing struggles for resources for everyday life, normative discourses of participation and representation are combined with more traditional cultures and practices in shaping and reviving contemporary political agency in Malawi. This also echoes the presence of physical political structures and also emergence of both social and political elites within the makeup. Malawi’s democracy stems back to 1994 when its first ever multiparty election was conducted. From the dawn of multiparty democracy, a lot of Malawians have had hope as they envisioned a new Malawi with economic growth and development trickling down to levels of education and life expectancy through improvement of education institutions as well as healthcare by their trusted new democratic leaders. To others’ it was like “heaven has reigned.” 

I don’t to want to bring back bad memories but for the sake of enlightment, let me take you back in time. The one party era was one of such tyrannical and violent political system which closed all democratic openings for the country and suffocating all civil societies. When time for multiparty elections came in 1994, three major political parties; MCP, UDF and AFORD, tussled dirtily and bitterly. Their campaigns did not address major issues but rather short of constructive ideas. This is was the genesis of “Decorated political lies” in form of promises to the desperate Malawians who for so long wanted political change. It is on record that almost all the contesting political parties were involved in making promises they knew would not be kept should they be voted into power. But why? The whole desperate agenda for change sometimes puts average Malawians in a scenario to believe everything their politicians say in chase of a winning vote.  

Fast forward, the 2020 court-sanctioned presidential election, which among others for the first time saw party-coalitions taking shape to overcome the newly interpreted law of 50+1, made the election a watershed and highly contested. The joint party manifestos, on top addressing challenges Malawians were facing, were also bloated with promises that were too beautiful and mouth-salivating. Among others, the Tonse alliance regime in their joint manifesto talked of 1 million Jobs within the first year of their office, universal subsidy for fertilizer at the price of K4495, clearing the rubble by ending endemic corruption and nepotism as well as promoting respect to the rule of law among others. 

Down the line, inside the trip to the Promised Land of “Canaan”, we have travelled around the sun almost three times but Malawians are yet to see signs and posts that the trip will indeed end in Canaan and not somewhere else. The much talked corruption which has become deep-rooted and order of the day, has rocked the Tonse Government with more scandals and alleged cases in the public domain. A recent survey carried out by Afrobarometer found out that two-thirds of Malawians believe corruption is getting worse under the Tonse Alliance. This is to say the corruption in this country is getting so pervasive that our leaders are not honest and accountable to the state resources. Aside the survey, a joint investigation by the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency (NCA) and Malawi’s Anti-Corruption Bureau have linked a Malawi-born British businessman to a big widespread procurement scandal over public contracts worth $150 million between 2019 and 2021. It involves the fraudulent supply of armored personnel carriers, food rations and water cannons. Another scandal also erupted in which the government paid K750 million to a UK-based butchery to supply AIP fertilizer while bypassing procurement laws. Echoing corruption problems in the country is “the corruption watchdog Transparency International” which ranked Malawi 129th out of 180 countries in terms of public sector corruption in 2020, scoring 30 out of 100 points on the global Corruption Perceptions Index. These signs are more than enough to ring warning bells that heads must roll. Luckily, when Chakwera emerged and stood on podium, during his inauguration, saying ‘we must clear the rubble of impunity, for it has left our governing institutions in ruins’, people thought he meant business unusual. But to everyone’s surprise, the recent arrest drama of ACB director, Martha Chizuma, over alleged audio signifies high-level corruption fighting back with full force. People are now starting to realize, it is business just as usual.

Blame game in the political atmosphere has become a disease and the current administration is not spared. The administration has been uttering sentiments blaming their predecessors for causing much harm to the nation which has in-turn led to the current mess the country has found itself in. Well, it’s not a crime to blame others but the question that is always asked is “What are you doing about it now that you are in control”. When an administration fails to address this question but rather insist pointing fingers at a previous regime, it’s a sign of a lost-direction. Yes, we live in a global village but an ordinary citizen in Mchinji, will not need all the technical explanation on why prices of sugar, salt and cooking oil are going up every day. Nor she or he doesn’t need to hear that war in Russia and Ukraine, a place he has never been to and will never be, has something to do with the hardship they are seeing. All they want is to live a life they can afford since they voted for change. The tricky part is, they compare that change to the previous regime and if the comparisons favors the previous to the current then it is Danger!!!

There is also another song by one of the country’s renowned artist which goes something like this “Boma silisintha amangosintha ndi mabedwe, Mbava ndizomwe zija zangosintha mabedwe”. In the song, the artist tries to paint a picture right in front of our eyes. A picture of how governments in Malawi come and go under different brands yet they are all the same in nature just with different ways of stealing tax payers’ money. A picture of how new figures appear on the political arena yet they are no different from the old ones, they just have different tactics of embezzling public funds. This picture somehow, one might think, is a true reflection of what Malawi is. Look! the very same things that a lot of people criticized the DPP government for, the current administration seems to have no problem repeating them in their era. For instance, the heavily criticized “Family Cabinet” which consisted mostly of people related to each other was backed up when people voiced their concerns. On another note, take note of how the battle of ending nepotism slowly started being swallowed when “the daughter to the president was caught in an appointment to an embassy”.

Time is fast catching up with reality as years are racing at supersonic speed. The year is 2023, a third year for the 9-party-Tonse administration. For a common Malawian in Thondwe, Ntharire to Mzambazi, whilst still looking for hope out of the “bleeding economy which is on death bed” he or she never lose sight of our leaders including the state president looking for answers. Despite the recent State of Nation Address (SONA) presented in parliament by the state president adding more salt onto the wound when the president said “Malawi’s Economy is a bad news”, Malawians are still waiting for the salivating promises from the long list of Tonse Alliance manifesto to be fulfilled at least one day. If not, a lot of questions will go down in people’s memory-lane. They shall always wonder; are all politicians the same? Who else will come and change things if the ones we trusted the most are failing to perform? Is there something like a political messiah in multiparty era? Change, a song that has been sang over and over again for a very long period of time, will it be sang to the eternity? It feels like this Tonse-Alliance Government has dubbed itself the old saying: “All politicians are the same”. However, there is a room for miracles in the remaining two years of their ruling. Only time will tell but for now, the sheep continue to graze the Sahara and the song keeps on playing.