Mankhokwe...

Have you ever heard of an inspirational story from our football national team, the Flames? If you have, how did it start, did it start with the team playing brilliant football, attacking with exceptional talent and giving the hope that we would carry the day or emerge victorious in that tournament? I bet it really started like that. The question is: how did it end? I can predict: with all those hopes dashed, a loss in the dying minutes. Poet Robert Chiwamba already covered the fate of the team in the famed Flames Sidzamva ! It is not as if he recited anything new, he told us what has been our football ailment since about 10 years ago when it became so worse. The loss of our football national team, now, is a result of a lot of issues among them uninspired an underpaid players, alcohol-infested players, a negative media (yes! a negative media) and - most importantly - football administrators. These football administrators, usually, are behind the other problems. They fleece t...

I had to rush here, on this space, to write this. Once, not so very long ago, I found this land to be beautiful. Despite all the shortfalls. I had read Alan Paton's Ah, But Your land is beautiful and had seen beauty everywhere. If Alan Paton could see beauty in an apartheid South Africa, I could as well see it in Malawi. So, with all the poverty and hunger and envy and tribalism and crime and nepotism and everything bad that can come to mind when you hear Malawi after experiencing it as a disadvantaged citizen, I still thought it is beautiful. I thought of the safety of traveling from home to distant places without being stopped by a suicide bomber in the tracks of my life and, I said, this land is beautiful too. I am not the only one. I was, minutes ago, reading some literature on something and something. As luck would have it, I chanced on a dissertation by one foreign student who did her research in Malawi. I was impressed. I like to see myself from the prism of anoth...

In Malawi, in 2014, we had 'successful' elections. Successful because an opposition party won - which really says a lot about the independence of the Electoral Commission. Successful because there were no people who died after the results were announced - if we can just forget the officer and a civilian who died during campaigning. Successful because the losing parties accepted the results - if we ignore all those desperate attempts to hold on to power by the sitting President at the time and all that crying from the opposition. However, it is not as if on the day of releasing the results there was no tension. There was tension. Palpable tension that spread in the veins of the country. Apparently, even before it came to the time of releasing the results, there was drama all the way through. A friend told me that one day, while we were still waiting for the results to be announced, he was in town. A gentleman, whether in the spirit of exercise or high on something, decid...