Malawi Needs Obama
(As was published in the Malawi Nation Newspaper of Friday the 8th August 08)
By Dr. Matthews Chinombo Mtumbuka
(The author is a UK-based Malawian working as a Portfolio Analyst for
Shell UK Ltd but writes in his personal capacity)
Just days before his death in April 2005, the late Pope John Paul II,
marked by the fatal suffering, came to the window of the Apostolic
Palace and gave his last blessing Urbi et Orbi i.e. “to the City [of
Rome] and to the world’ message. He may not be Pope, but Barack Obama, the
2008 Democratic Nominee for US Presidential elections, captured the
attention of the world when he addressed 200,000 people in Berlin, Germany
on 24th July this year. This was a speech in which Obama, like the
Pope, addressed the ‘People of Berlin and people of the World.’
We can ask; what is the meaning of Obama’s message to Malawi? Obama
called on the people of the world to look at Berlin, “where Germans and
Americans learned to work together and to trust each other, less than
three years after facing each other on the field of battle.” He pointed
out how the fall of the Berlin wall brought new hope to the world.
However, he did not lose sight of the prevailing challenges in the world:
from terrorism to poverty and violence in Somalia and to genocide in
Darfur. Obama called for unity and said “…such dangerous currents have
swept along faster than our efforts to contain them. That is why we cannot
afford to be divided.” Neither can Malawi.
Our country Malawi has its own evils and challenges. From poverty to
HIV/Aids, tribalism to regionalism, gender inequality to widening gap
between the poor and the rich. None of these challenges can be solved if
we are divided. In the face of divisions no solution is tenable. In
the absence of unity we can not even comprehend or accept these problems.
As Obama said of America and Europe, partnership and cooperation is
not a choice for us, it is the one and only way to advance our common
humanity.
Obama called for the tearing down of “the walls between the countries
with the most and those with the least. The walls between races and
tribes natives and immigrants; Christians and Muslims and Jews”.
Similarly, in our lovely Malawi, we must tear down the walls at Jenda and
Lizulu i.e. between the Regions. Section 65 and the Budget. Walls between
the tribes. Walls between the ultra-poor and the mega-rich. Between men
and women, the youth and elderly. We should replace all that with
equality and unity.
Over the decades, none of our governments has tackled these divisions
to any measurable degree. In such circumstances, government does not
become a force of good or a means of giving people the opportunity to
lead better lives. Rather, what we have seen is divisions borne of the
politicians’ unmet hunger for votes, amplified by their zeal to reward a
few people and reinforced by the timidity of the beneficiaries of
these discrepancies. But Obama has called on the people of Berlin and
people of the world to take action and pull down such walls. We must
identify our local walls in Malawi, recognise them, accept their existence and
then unite to tear them all down. Now is the moment to tell the young
generation that the measure of the fulfilment of their potential is not
limited by their gender or whether they come from Jingeni or Jenda,
Lizulu or Lilangwe. But determined by their talent, ambition and
hard-work – God’s mercy being a given constant.
In the past we have seen failure on multiple fronts. Politicians
have exploited our divisions and aggravated the problem, religious leaders
have done very little to address the problem, traditional chiefs are
too busy, academics are overloaded or have fled away, young people are
told to wait for tomorrow, others are too timid and powerless to
confront these issues. But time is running out.
The good news is that Obama offers a single solution to our
wide-ranging problems in Malawi through his address to the people of Berlin and
the people of the world. In fact he did this before as well, in his
landmark address to the Democratic National Convention in August 2004 when
he said “there is no Republican America, no Conservative America.
There is one United States of America. There is no Black America, no Asian
America, No Latino America, No White America. There is only one United
States of America.” Equally we can all proclaim that there is no
Southern Malawi or Central or Northern Malawi, there is only one single
Malawi Nation. There is no Yao Malawi, no Chewa Malawi, no Tumbuka Malawi.
There is only one Republic of Malawi. We should not wait for Barack
Obama or a local Obama to tell us this message. We must unite and act now!