Dear Khumbo,

I now remember after we had turned the new leaf of this nation in April I have not spared any moment to write to you. I did not know whether to congratulate you for your ascendancy to citizen number two or to console you over the death of President Bingu wa Mutharika.

But as they say, better late than never, dear Khumbo, receive my heartily season's greetings of this favourite season of the purple Jacarandas.

Dear Khumbo, I was about to heal from the deep wounds I suffered during the bad DPP era when you decided to injure me further with your careless wagging of the tongue that other day in Karonga.

I now believe the proverbial saying that when you look at a King's mouth you would think he never sucked at his mother's breast.

Between us Khumbo, your standing on the podium to arrogantly challenge Malawians that you will, with reckless abandon, continue to travel and plunder our little resources because you don't go to our fathers' and mothers' houses is pure hubris and smacks of fermented haughtiness.

Let me tell you what Khumbo, It really grieves my heart that a Vice President, who was never, and I doubt if he could ever, be elected but only finds himself in that position due to the accidental dictates of death should grow extra wings to become so conceited.

Remember they say those whose palm-kernels were cracked for them by a benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.

Look here KK, I never wanted to remind you this ugly truth but I will. Do you have any slight idea that even if, just as it happened with the late Bingu, madame JB( God forbid) goes to meet her maker you will be left in the cold seeking our votes to make you President?

I am told you have apologised. But my sad experience with politicians is that apologies do not come from deeper than the mouth. They are usually an afterthought to salvage some dwindling popularity and never a show of remorse. After all, the damage is already done.

Dear Khumbo, only a person with few threads of sanity in the brain would accept that what you said was a slip of the tongue. To me, that is exactly the political philosophy you and your PP and the many parties that came before yours have: To steal from our already depleted coffers and after eating too much start insulting us.

KK, I do not need to tell you that the economy is still in shambles, people are dying from petty diseases and poverty is biting hard. We need level headed leaders who can steer this nation from the path of damnation and not clowns and jesters whose only gift is a tongue that utters filth.

I am not sure how good your memory is but if you just go back a few months ago and look at what happened with the DPP then you can know that you are taking quite a similar route as they did.

When the UDF and DPP regimes realised the nation had veered into the wrong lane and they had lost control they resorted to raining insults on us. Bakili Muluzi, another tragic character in the Malawi script, used to call us mad people, while Bingu (RIP) called us tiny owls and crackling chickens.

What I am saying is, when leaders turn to insulting subjects it only means they have run out of ideas and are under extreme pressure for failing to run the country and would want some victim to vent their anger on as a form of catharsis.

But as the previous regimes have shown, insults are most frequent when time to leave the stage is nigh. I will not be surprised if in 2014 you are put to your rightful place.

You know what KK, I have always wondered how our ancestors incensed the gods so that we should inherit a curse of having leaders who lack decorum, standards and a bit of sophistication. Cry Malawi, Cry!

I agree with you Khumbo that the President and her deputy, that is you in this case, cannot do without travelling. But don't you think you two are over doing it? Look here, I do not even know whether you have ever spent a day in the office. All I hear is the President is gracing a donation, the Vice President is opening a telecentre and many other trifling functions even too small for an office clerk.

You and I know that, with this politics of patronage, whenever the President or the deputy travels it means almost all cabinet ministers, Principal Secretaries are travelling as well just to demonstrate loyalty which means fat allowances wasted, fuel guzzled by the scary motorcades and you know what. Now, as you have honestly promised us that we should brace for more of your careless travels how much more money will we have to waste?

KK, I promise I will not tell madame JB that she will live to regret having people like you in the party. I know, and you know that I know, even though there is orange peace on the surface, there are conflicts brewing beneath the PP's ranks.

Only if you are naive you might think all is rosy in the party. For starters, yours is a party that was born out of sympathy, grew out of greed and its foundations are brittle. So instead of building the party to stand any chance in the gruelling battle of 2014 you, Khumbo, are alienating it from the people who are obviously tired of decades of being insulted.

I hope you have taken your time to try to find out about the hospital beds that went crawling at night from Mponela to Edingeni and Euthini.

Dear Khumbo, the whole bed issue, I think, is mired in some political machinations. What I think is it is either someone in your party thought it a well calculated campaign tactic in the coming Mzimba by-elections or someone in the party might just have done that to make you unpopular with a tag of "the VP who wants everything at his home district."

Whatever the case Khumbo, I know one day your tongue will put you in trouble again because, I am told, you have such uppity and you are fond of speaking before thinking.

Happy season of jacarandas dear Khumbo, and if we might speak again let us not remind each other about the privation of our fathers and mothers.

Yours,

Junior Citizen

Addendum

A hollow nation

I rember in the first decade of multiparty when Bakili Muluzi had just become President, he took the whole (read whole) cabinet and many others to was it United States of America or United Kingdom all both and elsewhere to beg.

It was really a show of administrative rottenness that really puzzled even those we went to beg from. What was the argument against such trip? The argument was simple; the trip or trips were too expensive for a country that is a perpetual beggar.

I read in the papers the other day that I have unwittingly contributed to the K308 million President Joyce Banda and her huge entourage that includes chiefs and some party loyalists have taken to blow in the United States.

Honestly, K308 million is no small change for a tramp of a country like Malawi. Who signs these cheques? Does it mean we have a bunch of puppets and rubberstamps at the treasury who cannot even tell the President to check her expenditure?

We cried and cried that the DPP government was abusing our taxes. That is after we had wailed and wailed that the UDF government was stealing our money. Where will change come from? They say leaders are chosen by God, which God gives us these leaders?

There is a tobacco barn somewhere that is used as a classroom for a primary school. There is also a kraal that pupils learn from somewhere. There is a sad tale of a person who died because there were no rabbies drugs at the hospital. Is K308 million so small that it cannot or could not address the tragedies I have just mentioned?

I was thinking this other day about the people that are now in state house so close to President Banda. Most of them looked very bright and critical during Bingu's time. Talk of Journalists, lawyers, activists (by the way, who is an activist?). The same journalists who blamed Bingu for excessive travelling are now either looking the other way when JB does the same or if they speak it is in defence of her slapdash policies. Hahahahaha where have the brave, bright minds gone?

I laughed and laughed at a cartoon in the newspaper that depicted some people observing eating etiquette of not speaking with food in the mouth. Surely the etiquette must be serious at state house.

There is a poem I always recite when I think of all of us Malawians. It was done by Thomas Stearns (TS) Elliot it reads:

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Are we not a hollow nation?