By Cedrick Ngalande, PhD The scene is set on July 6, 1990. His Excellency the Life President Ngwazi Dr H Kamuzu Banda arrives at Kamuzu Stadium on top of an open Land Rover truck, his fly whisk in hand. Thousands of people fill the stadium. The overflow crowd goes as far Kamuzu Highway and up to the Malawi Polytechnic. As the Ngwazi enters the stadium to the song, “Uyo, uyo, uyo Ngwazi”, the crowd becomes frenzy. They are members…
The then Israeli Foreign Minister, Abban Eban, once referred to Israel’s neighbors as people who “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity”. There are times in the world when all proverbial stars line up for a certain outcome, but the opportunity still gets missed because of carelessness and lack of foresight. By all accounts, the Tonse Alliance is at its lowest point today. Divisions are growing; the president is grappling with unprecedented pandemic and in the process failing…
By Cedrick Ngalande It is a classic case study in management: The President sets up a COVID-19 taskforce to implement a strategy for protecting the country from the pandemic. The anti-COVID-19 organization misappropriates funds, nearly K7 billion. The President asks the officials to account for the money. They do not respond to him. Unsure what to do, the President addresses the nation and complains that the officials are not responding to his questions. He then gives them 48 hours…
By Cedrick Ngalande There was an interesting denial in the papers this week. A letter purportedly leaked from an organization called Chichewa Heritage Foundation (CHEFO) invited all Chewa people to submit their resumes to a Chewa resume bank, presumably to ensure that Chewa people get jobs in government. Not surprising the leaked letter caused an uproar in the country. The leader of CHEFO then issued a statement characterizing the ‘leaked’ letter as fake news. CHEFO remains apolitical, he said….
By Cedrick Ngalande Our country is broken because, over the years, we have moved away from fundamentals that help countries grow. I started talking about these fundamentals last week when I discussed the importance of electricity to our economy. Today, in keeping with the same philosophy of ‘fixing the fundamentals’, I want to talk about corruption. It is a fact that we are seriously losing the battle against corruption. People who were barely making it, before joining government or…
By Cedrick Ngalande The greatest problem facing these African countries is what I call, “following in the footsteps” syndrome. In a scenario where one person is leading the other in, say a forest, the person in front is forced to exercise his creativity to decide which path to chart. The person behind only has to do one thing: wait for the leader to remove his foot so, he can place his own in that footprint. He does not need…
By Cedrick Ngalande Mike Tyson the famed American boxer once said: “Everybody has a plan until he gets punched in the face”. Since 1964, six men and one woman have come forward with plans to develop the nation. The plans have ranged from Kamuzu’s ‘Gwero visions’ to Muluzi’s ‘Everybody will wear shoes in my government’; from Bingu’s ‘Dreaming in Color” to Chakwera’s ‘1 million jobs in 6 months and cheap fertilizer/subsidy for everybody’. Most of those plans have failed. As…