Thursday, February 21, 2013

The Faculty That Was Fooled

Trouble seldom ceases to brew at University of Malawi’s main constituent college in Zomba. It is either lecturers are in a civil conflict with college management or the university management; or students are taking to task college management or even Unima governing body for failing to address their needs. On very rare occasions, it is students against their lecturers or lecturers against their students.

Chancellor College suffers numerous anomalies, but, oftentimes, the powers that be seem less interested to find lasting solutions to the problems that have sadly established roots. They even appear to disregard every cry from those below them with careless abandon. And, in every way, that is a very dangerous style of running an institution of higher learning.

The graduation ceremony that took place at the College of Medicine sports complex recently might have appeared a glamorous event garnished with its deserved splendour. But, in the background, there was a loud faint cry from a faculty that felt it had been fooled. The historic event of 26 October perfectly analogised the proverbial fortune for one man, misfortune for another scenario.

The Faculty of Education is the largest at Chancellor College, but that doesn’t mean it has to dictate the progress of other faculties. Perhaps, that’s why Unima Council decided to leave it behind when it graduated all faculties from Bunda College, CoM, Kamuzu College of Nursing and The Polytechnic. Well, even from the aggrieved faculty, there were some sections which graduated, but these did not join the college more than five years ago.

Those that joined the college more than five years ago are still doing their Teaching Practice, and Unima couldn’t wait for them. It even stings deeper when the governing body engages in no soothing comments to allay the fear of the students who still believe they might graduate a year later or so.

Education students on TP are not crying for the ceremony to make a virtue of necessity; they are concerned about their futures which look bright, but can be easily dampened by any delay in accessing their formal and legitimate papers. Others have been delayed before, and it is from such experiences that education students have learnt the dangers of delaying to access one’s paper. Impressive opportunities have the tendency of slipping out of the fingers of those that don’t access their formal qualifications early enough.

The other trouble is that it takes forever for one to access their performance transcripts after finishing their undergraduate studies. Yet, in the absence of the actual degree, that is the only significant document for those who want to pursue higher studies. In fact, it is imperative for someone who has finished their undergraduate studies to immediately access their transcript for the sake of alternative employments and other personal adventures.

The aggrieved students issued a press statement before the graduation ceremony so that the authorities could consider their plea. But, Council – in its usual sloppy approach to essential matters – described the students’ concerns as a waste of time. This has to hurt.

It is a credible fact that the ceremony was long overdue, but the decision to hold it should have been reached at after extensive consultation considering the fact that Unima constituent colleges have inconsistent calendars which create problems when it comes to organising graduation ceremonies. But, now that the ceremony has already been done, the only thing the students are asking for is to hold their own soon after finishing their TP.

Every student who finishes their undergraduate studies expects to graduate as soon as possible, not a year later. Of course, many irregularities continue rocking Unima’s constituent colleges’ calendars, but these irregularities can be partly solved by letting students have their graduation ceremonies soon after finishing their undergrad studies. Such an approach may indeed be costly, but if we look at the greater good, we come to conclude that it is better to spend money on individuals who are going to help in the development of the nation as soon as possible, than to let their potential stall.

Council states that because of the ‘extra’ three months which education students add to their four years of theory lessons, it was only by coincidence that previously they graduated together with their colleagues who pursued different programmes. The observation seems attractive, but it ignores the important fact that holding a graduation ceremony soon after finishing one’s studies shouldn’t be an option. The world is moving very fast and wasting time unnecessarily should be avoided.

The students rightly feel that holding their ceremony next year – probably, October – isn’t even a sure thing. It is hard to predict the progress of Unima calendars where a four year programme has the possibility of being finished in six years. Thus, if the education students don’t graduate soon after their TP, they can never be sure of when they will. It may be next year, the year after next, or even three years from now, when potential outlets for higher education and other opportunities have been shut.

Even though the university management argues that it was by sheer coincidence that in the past education students from Chancellor College held their graduation ceremony together with their counterparts from other faculties, such a coincidence was more reasonable than Unima’s ‘normal’ arrangement. It was a beautiful coincidence that remarkably pursued the route of ethical justice.

There is an option which will be a line of least resistance for both Council and education students on TP. The higher education governing body can hold a graduation ceremony for both Chanco students on TP and Bunda College students who wrote their final year examinations last month and are still going to graduate under the Unima banner.

Otherwise, Chancellor College education students on TP feel greatly discriminated against and fooled by a mother body that seems disinterested and unconcerned. And, if the anomaly isn’t addressed now, the victims will not only be those that were recently fooled and are being fooled now. Future generations will continue being fooled.

Why I'm Opposed to Jan. 17 Demos

Malawi president Joyce Banda has shown a rare and contradictory character which might have been inherent in her all these days. Like her predecessor, who left us when we least expected it, the second woman top leader in Africa, doesn’t easily follow those she is leading.

There are people in this country who see in our noble leader a reckless top-most person whose sole agenda is to rewrite the conventional precepts of how presidents should behave in moments of crisis. We, as a country, are in a horrible economic crisis. But, just like anywhere else, our president and those who surround her, seldom feel the pinch.

They live on our sweat – and treat us with undeserved contempt. We must never cease to react, for if we do, we are doomed to be driven elsewhere. We are justified to physically protest peacefully; after all, it is a sacred provision enshrined in our sovereign Constitution.

There apparently are very few seemly ways to protest. But, that’s what crops up in a country that has thrived on love and unity, and hasn’t been given a chance to protest in its streets in times when it should have. It must be so clear that they protest best that have satisfied tummies. The other party is often a frustrated one, and can become very violent and vindictive.

That’s why I’m opposed to the [forthcoming] physical demonstrations organised by Consumer Association of Malawi Executive Director, John Kapito. Kapito is a fighter, or he could be one. People say his driving passion is the desire to see consumers, nay Malawians, live fine lives. That might be true, but then, he isn’t some demigod who declares what should happen and it happens right away.

He too can be wrong at times, and pursue an erroneous case. That’s why we haven’t immediately given him the benefit of the doubt. We have analysed his concerns and efforts. They seem good-natured and indicative of a lone voice that’s struggling to clear the way for posterity.

But, his passionate tackle of the demos doesn’t speak volumes of a patriotic director who knows when not to go to war. I would be an obsessive protestor on January 17, but I have a thousand reasons not to. The organisers don’t draw lessons from the mists of time; lessons which should be clearly evident to date since they haven’t instantly been tucked away.

The infamous July 20 demos reared one of the ugliest heads of African protests. Twenty human lives were lost and the killers have the dark stories hidden in the deep recesses of their hearts while their victims, whom we christened martyrs -- perhaps, to salvage some solace -- will never return.

The police were never right to kill, but neither were we justified to burn shops and block roads. It should have been a peaceful demonstration and, essentially, a peaceful demonstration doesn’t demand excessive presence of the police.

It went haywire because we misunderstood our rights and burnt our responsibilities. People have talked about the police failing to control the protestors. That’s somewhat ridiculous. How on earth do you give yourself the task of controlling a peaceful person whose agenda is to walk from one point to another and deliver a petition? Then, period!

If you organise a protest and let your followers destroy property and injure innocent people, shouldn’t you be taken to task? Well, in Malawi, you can rest on your laurels and let tomorrow be another clear day. The same laws which tell you that you have the right to protest peacefully don’t boomerang on you if you fail to have power over your right.

The 20 July demos could, perhaps, have been somehow peaceful if the organisers had accepted that they would be responsible for any damage and endorse a peaceful demonstration. If Kapito and company are resolute about their noble cause, they must be ready to face the consequences.

What if the ugly scenes of 20 July reappear? Will Kapito be taken to task? What if more lives are taken by our overzealous officers? Will they be taken to task? We have seen it before; we shouldn’t see it again. It’s us the lesser humans who are most affected by demos of this nature. In 2011, out of the 20 massacred men, not a single one was a civil society leader. That should tell us something.

Government invited the CAMA Executive Director to roundtable discussions on the matter. He rejected the tender. Of course, we know we still have a government that seldom wants to compromise on anything. Kapito might have read the writing on the wall, but not all of us read it. He should have gone for dialogue and come out furious after failing to agree with government’s terms or conditions. He didn’t, and that’s where the trouble lies.

I have always wondered if there is only one option when it comes to protesting against government policies. A protest in the streets may last a day in large part, but a sit-in may be a daily aspect until our grievances sink deep at the State House. We can start with mass strikes in the civil service and see how it works. Civil servants are consumers too and can listen to Kapito.

Well, I have no right to stop those who are keen on demonstrating in our streets. Nevertheless, I have a reason to. The 20 July scenario might not be repeated, but then, there is no guarantee. Government could be arrogant and therefore deserve some awakening, but, you don’t have to be the next victim of ‘stray’ bullets and unnecessary stampedes. Stay home, be safe!

JB: A President on Trial?

Listening to numerous voices that rise to right the wrongs of president Joyce Banda, you would easily believe she is a president on trial. But, she isn’t; it’s the country she ‘rules’ that is on trial. Her cohorts want us to believe she is ruling a country that isn’t giving her much room to express herself.

The truth is we are being led by a president that isn’t giving us enough opportunity to express ourselves. She must guess what we want and act on the guess even if she hasn’t divined it. That’s pretty dangerous. We are being tried by our own president and our voices are subdued in the immense power that she all of a sudden wields.

At the beginning of her really glorious times, JB hoodwinked us into believing she was a listening president who would always be at our beck and call. She had to in order to have a nice start, with all the deserved support.

Now, she has come to a conclusion that our honeymoon should be over and it is over indeed. After implementing certain policies according to our highly ‘expected’ expectations, the president can’t continue towing our line. We have to tow her line, even if it is a crooked one.

It is strange that JB instantly responded to our calls that had been neglected by her predecessor, but is now holding tight to policies which we want her administration to change. The same majority that she believed was right doesn’t matter now because she isn’t part of it anymore.

Experts have advised government to stop the floatation of our currency. The president has also been tipped to reduce her cabinet and to consider delegating on some of the most mundane errands a whole state leader can ever undertake. There are other voices of reason which the president unfortunately continues discounting.

Well, if she can’t listen to the cry of her people, then she is taking them through a painful trial which but might terribly backfire. We put presidents on those coveted seats and we can easily ‘unput’ them. But, we never fail to show them the right way. We never cease to offer valid pieces of advice that can clear the way for them.

We are a people on trial. The ridiculous part of it is that the very same person who is taking us through this trial seems to believe she too is being tried. She is surrounded by hungry panthers who will not hesitate to tell her ninety per cent of Malawians applaud her policies if it means maintaining their monthly cheques. And she believes them. She can’t easily read between the lines.

Those outside the circle, who have objective eyes to see what is actually happening around, are being described as frustrated fellows who are on the president’s neck simply because they haven’t been appointed directors of government organisations. Well, maybe, they indeed are, but then, the anomalies they are observing are valid and supported by empirical evidence. You simply have to be slipshod enough to pass over them.

The Plight of Chanco Education Students

The University of Malawi has been losing its reputation of late. Unnecessary administrative scuffles, student demonstrations and poor funding are not uncommon. Its graduates too are half-baked; at least, that’s what employers out there are alleging.

And, then, there is this one matter that hasn’t received much attention and publicity. It has been safely tucked away in the vastness of Unima’s troubles. The lone voices that could take this matter out for public opinion have been promised things would be OK very soon. But everything remains pathetically pretentious, it hurts.

When President Joyce Banda ‘graduated’ students who had successfully accomplished their studies with Unima constituent colleges last October, she was mindful of the fact that Chancellor College Bachelor of Education students were not included in the book of graduands. It was understandable. You can’t graduate, unless you have finished your studies at a particular level.

The president informed the nation that those that had not been included on the list of graduands should not worry. I don’t know if she continued following her own concern immediately after the ceremony – where she was christened Unima’s Chancellor. Because if she did, she would know that almost two months after they finished their Teaching Practice, Education students haven’t yet received their final results.

She would follow – of course, maybe, through the right personnel – the tentative date of the next graduation she, or the Vice Chancellor, would preside over. Well, she is a busy president, and has too many policy papers strewn on her desk. Lesser authorities can handle the Education students’ exam results and inform her that it’s finally a done deal waiting for when she would be ready to preside over a next graduation ceremony, if she has space, which I believe she doesn’t.

But the administration at Chancellor College is still sitting on Education students’ results as if afraid the college is producing too many graduates. It’s pretty strange that the results which were allegedly submitted to college management weeks before – after a faculty level assessment – haven’t yet been considered for release. We know a senate assessment isn’t a big fuss.

While some of their colleagues from other faculties that they entered college together have found jobs with their degrees, Education students can’t even land themselves some part-time assignments because they have no formal backing. Employers can’t just trust them. After all, it is a traditional trend that soon after their results are out, Education students are supposed to be posted to different secondary schools, meaning they have their jobs cut and dried.

But Chanco has chosen to keep the students waiting for as long as it will take. In the previous years, TP results took just weeks to be released. Now the trend is changing. Every administrator has to have his own policies, and one of them is to turn the conventional predictions around and let things be viewed from a different angle.

No one knows why Education students’ final results are being withheld. No one knows why students who have been in college for some extra two years continue being treated with such malice. Well, someone must know. Someone knows and should be doing that for a better reason. Or, simply to show that they have power to do whatever they please.

The students have even reached the extent of drawing out different theories. That’s exactly what happens with frustrated people. They find solace in maxims and theories. They believe that government doesn’t have enough money to be paying another bunch of civil servants and intends to accumulate some funds first before advising Chanco to release the results of Education students who should subsequently be assigned to different secondary schools.

It could be an outlandish theory. But, if you choose to believe it, it makes sense. Otherwise what can make a whole college administration fail to mobilise relevant ways of making sure final results of slightly above 150 students are treated with the urgency that they deserve.

Creating so many complications about a small matter is one undoing of administrators. A college administrator is an academic administrator. Academic administrators ought to be shrewd and quick in matters that call for urgency. Why is this not the case with Chanco administrators?

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Wicked Angels: The Bleak Paradox of African Leaders

If you intend to take lessons in how power compels people to contradict themselves, you have African presidents as an ideal sample. But, that’s not all; you will also discover that the trend has survived through decades simply because there are those who worship these wicked African angels, and they are many, for that matter. Some, with fringe benefits.

You will virtually reach the point of flattering our colonial masters. After all, they ruled us against our will, but still gave us our daily bread, vigilantly though. And our own fellow Africans, drawn from the scraps of history, choose who to feed and who to starve. At least, our colonial masters, somehow clad in human depravity, mildly loved – or hated – all of us impartially.

Those with whom we share our ancestry have no regard for our welfare. They engage themselves in the very corrupting precepts of power which they have always condemned. They wash their cars with imported mineral water while those they claim to lead – not mislead? – wake up at midnight to check if the taps are running, if at all they have any.

These are the bleak paradoxes in our leaders which we must now interrogate if there should be any hope for posterity. At the helm of African states are pretenders and crooks. They are the national bourgeoisies who simply replace the colonisers while adopting the same egocentric policies which we hate. They have nothing good to offer, it hurts.

Fate gave us Joyce Banda in a period of great crisis. She inherited an austere economy; found on her desk innumerable demands from her people; and believed she was a president on trial. We gave her the benefit of the doubt and didn’t hope she would be some mysterious goddess who would turn things around in the twinkling of some divine eye. She was human – and didn’t have to be that hasty climber who could easily fall from our grace.

But, the seat she occupied demand resolute minds and independent judgments, of course, with some consultation from people who honestly know our history. Not foreign envoys whose agenda is always to see us beg. Her reforms seemed attractive initially, but then she went overboard and made significant decisions without really thinking of how to unmake them.

That’s how difficult the seat she occupies can be. It is an adorable and easy seat when you are watching it from a distance but when you occupy it, you are easily consumed by pride and conceit. You even can have the audacity to tell off those who are humbly asking you to have some time to analyse the numerous policy papers on your desk.

Now, Malawians are up in arms forcing the president to address a number of economic hardships that we are facing as a people and to establish – or re-establish – proper economic policies in which we should have confidence. But, JB doesn’t seem to care. She is caught up in the corrupting influence of power just like most of her African counterparts. She is even religiously towing Washington’s and London’s line. It isn’t odd; even the amazing Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, to whom in many aspects our president can’t hold a candle, is a willing puppet of the west.

Our president’s office is overspending by hundreds of millions, but she still doesn’t see a need to be more cautious. After all, why shouldn’t she care when she is leading a people that can lose confidence in a leader and still allow her to lead them, even into a dark dungeon of tribulations?

Well, she is not alone even on the aspect of extravagance. Many other African leaders are travelling in expensive cars with long convoys. And just like everywhere else, the cars that form our president’s convoy don’t have water-run engines. They use the fuel whose prices have risen terrifically in the past few months. We have talked and talked and the president has given us one general response: she has to listen to her conscience and cohorts more than to public opinion.

We hoped to see in her a listening mother who wouldn’t dismiss our pleas offhand. We were sadly mistaken. She must act in accordance with the numerous unwritten doctrines that guide African presidents. Thus, it is horrible folly to seek an angel in the midst of warped African leaders. Out of tens of African presidents, it is unwise to imagine that ours alone – with a few others – can plausibly reduce her convoy, make expected delegations and have no-one to compensate for unfair dismissal.

African presidents have many enemies, both real and imagined, and our president is no exception. They dissolve cabinets willy-nilly and immediately fire whoever isn’t towing the presidential line. They dismiss directors of statutory corporations and retrieve millions from their countries’ ailing coffers to compensate those they fire.

We can’t expect JB to act differently unless we draw the hands of time back to April last year when a few moments after feeling the presence of the Holy Spirit, she wrote off any prospect of vengeance. But within the same breath, she began to contradict herself. But then, we can’t fault her for contradicting herself. She is an African president and you can’t expect to find an angel among African presidents.

For Africa to prosper, we need unAfrican presidents. We need to have at the helm of power people who will be satisfied with the classified conditions of their ‘jobs’ and never overspend recklessly. We need people who can make friends out of their adversaries and practice what they preach. We don’t really need saints; we simply need men and women who cast their eyes beyond the expiry date of their office terms. People who will let contracts be distributed evenly and resist the temptation to unjustly employ all their kin are what we need.

Yet, we must be aware that such a breed is hard to find in our society. We can’t easily trace perfect men and women who must lead by following their people. They are like gold dust. In this case, our final ray of hope will be in making attractive presidents out of these wicked angels. We will give them a chance to change their awful ways. If they pay no heed to our modest efforts, we will force them out of the hot seat. Yes, we will. Either before or at the official ballot.

New data offers hope on HIV treatment

New data which a London-based pharma company, ViiV Healthcare, and a Geneva-based non-governmental organisation, Medicines Patent Pool (MPP)...