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Monday, July 12, 2010

Development ? What Development? An ode to the real Malawi flag


Sometimes we Malawians behave as if we do not know what else is happening outside our borders.
The country builds a simple parliament building (with loan funds), a short dual carriage way, a hotel (where the majority of our 13 million people will never sleep in). Throw in a couple of promises of a 'dream' waterway to the Indian Ocean- we all scramble to give titles to the man in State House- who is already handsomely paid to do his job!

I have not traveled much in the world, so I cannot claim that we all the least developed country in the world. But this much I know - I have been to South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Senegal on this beautiful continent of ours- and I can say that while poverty does exist in all those countries, my beloved Malawi is behind all of them in terms of visible infrastructural development.
A single hotel, a new parliament building, a few dual carriage way roads here, a uranium mine there and a few patched up roads scattered around don't mean we have all of a sudden overcome all our myriad development challenges, let alone the grinding poverty.
Which is why I am, if you can excuse my French, pissed off that the Malawi government has bulldozed this flag change on the pretext that the country has made significant developmental achievements especially under the term of the current occupant in State House.
My patriotism always longs for a better Malawi. Whatever little achievements we have made, they are just a step towards a far much better Malawi. Which is why this blog will always fly the true flag of Malawi, with its rising sun as a beckon of a new and better day.