By Wesley Macheso
Down memory lane. Back in the days, 1992 to be precise, Catholic bishops in Malawi released their first pastoral letter commenting on the ills and evils of the one party regime. The letter was titled ‘Living Our Faith’ and tore apart the then Malawi Congress Party (MCP) regime, which was otherwise beyond reproach. That letter made way for more voices of dissent and revolutionary action that saw the fall of the monolithic regime.
Since then, the church has become a fundamental part of Malawi’s political fabric and no wise politician can dismiss the power that the clergy holds over them. This year, the pastoral letter from the bishops bears the title ‘Who Will Roll Away The Stone For Us?’, and, in it, the men of faith lament the deplorable state of our nation. The bishops have capitalised on the symbolism in the story of the resurrection of Jesus to talk about the burden that lies ahead of us as we head towards the September 16, 2025 general elections.
We are like those three women who were on the road to Jesus’ grave, all the while worried about who would remove the huge stone on the entrance of that grave. The letter mentions the many stones that ought to be rolled away to make way for a better future. Another thing that stands out is the idea of Malawians moving towards a grave, which is the general election. Come to think of it, every opportunity we have had to elect new leaders in the past has ended up yielding tragedy.
There was a time we used to be naïve and hoped that new leaders would mean new dispensations, only to realise that our politicians are cut from the same cloth. The worst disappointment, perhaps, is the present regime that carried us on wings of hope only to drop us into the sea midflight. 2020 was a year of hope but we have ended up in a spot of despair–a grave, with a huge rock blocking the way.
But who will roll away the stone for us? Since independence, Malawians have always not been afraid to roll away obstacles in front of them. The one-party dictatorship was fought and defeated by the masses. After that, there was president Bakili Muluzi, who got drunk on power and needed a third term of office, and it took Malawians to put him in his right place. Most recently, we witnessed how the masses raged against the corruption, impunity and arrogance of the Peter Mutharika administration, booting them out of power when they least expected it. So, when it comes to political stones, Malawians have always rolled them away by themselves.
But how about the other stones like corruption, incompetence in leadership, inflation, just to mention but a few? One would competently argue that it is our responsibility as citizens to roll away these stones through collective action. So far, we have failed to deal with the many problems we face because our actions only go as far as changing the faces of politicians in office.
We have not used our collective power to demand what is right from politicians and to hold them accountable for their failures once they are in office. The average Malawian only exercises their power at the ballot and, after that, resigns to whatever fate politicians choose for them. This is why these people lie to us during campaigns because they know that they would not be accountable.
Once in power, they steal everything and we don’t do anything about it until the next election. This is what has mostly led to our stagnation as a nation. We, as citizens of this beautiful country, must learn how to exercise our power beyond the ballot. Citizen action has been proven to shake things up whenever politicians are too comfortable in their seats.
A recent example is the protest by secondhand clothes vendors who marched on Parliament. We saw how, even the President, moved when all along he had been silent as if everything was rosy. These are the kind of leaders that we have– they sit down and eat while we die of hunger and otherwise curable ailments. If we, citizens, don’t shake them up, demand from them what we want and pin them down to accountability, nothing will change. These politicians are not the ones to roll away the stone for us. They are the stone.
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