The Vice President Twister—Southern Itinerary

Once I worked in a foreign-owned private company where—upon joining—I met a boss who ran wet in the breeches every time he saw me approaching. Thus he got busy 'getting rid' of me through deliberate ill-treatment such as assigning ‘pick-up’ trucks [back then SUVs were not popular company cars] to me while dishing out limousines to his kinsfolk within the organization. But, because I knew the business and white management upstairs considered me a ‘good performer’ and candidate to replace the ‘boss-of-bosses’, other and more surgical solutions had to found. Hence, the boss ‘timely surprised’ me with another ‘brand-new-second-hand' pick up truck replacement[to use his next to impossible terminology]! Naively, I took the vehicle out for a 'test drive' on the new Zalewa [Mbayani] section. I was the most educated thereafter. First, at the corner of my rear-view eye, I flittingly noticed an object chasing and overtaking my car. Second, I noticed that the flying saucer was actually a wheel that had somehow dissociated itself from the car I was driving. In a flash I remembered that shortly before the boss-of-boss had made the ceremony of 'handing it over' to me,the car had just emerged from the workshops across the parking yard.  Third, I quickly switched my mind to the drama at large: then the car and me were already performing some 'Youth Week' somersaults in a ditch yonder. Some people are simply good at ways of eliminating troublesome opposition!

Yet, when shove came to push it was actually me—not the witchdoctors I regularly found late at night hanging about my darkened my office—who got rid of me from the company. I arrogantly talked myself out of a job!

The moral of the story is this: it is not necessary to go the whole hog and seek to impeach a Vice President who happens to be a senior employee in an organization. There are 'private-sector-smart' ways of doing that. Out in the private sector, in so far as you are drawing a salary, you invariably must have a ‘swipe card’: to prove attendance. But not everyone comes near the swipe machine. Also not everyone is junior enough to have to walk about with swipe cards. So—given monthly reports and management meetings can be places where lies are told with a straight face—the private sector devised other ways through which big Kahunas have to prove they deserve their hefty pay packets.

Here is how it works and can be applied elsewhere:

Instead of snatching the nation's VPs motorcade [as has been the approach so far], the strategy should actually be the other way round. Enhance the post of the VP: call it National Marketing VP [NMVP] and allocate the longest motorcade possible to that post. This should include a mobile marquee—because the NMVP will be physically camping out in the open throughout this period. Also provide an ambulance to cater for these ‘climate improvement’ times: too much sun and dangers of UV-related strokes.

Having been so well armed, then give the NMVP the second thing to be used on the nationwide sojourn I am proposing here. A prepared speech would be the best tool. Growing up I was told if one sinned, he went to a heavenly-holding cell called ‘Purgatory’. While there one said his ‘ndachimwa! ndachimwa! ndachimwa! ad infinitum’—all the time beating a fist against the chest for fifty billion times—before being released into PARADISE. The NMVP will need a prepared speech to be read—mark my word ‘READ’ [not even ad lib etc]—at every stop in those districts to be included on this must-be-done ‘National Tour’ itinerary. And every second line in the speech will require the NMVP pour praises on the boss’s wisdom to accord such a privilege: to be the first to announce the boss’ vision as well as this extended trip across Malawi and sections of the globe!

Here is the provisional NMVP itinerary; beginning at the lower tip of Malawi.

1.           Nsanje

·                   The NMVP to READ of the decision to organize the people of Nsanje into teams. Their primary task will be to clear the ‘Namasupuni’ growth on the lower Shire River. This is in readiness for the arrival of the first ship at Nsanje Port [more details below].  The NMVP will inform the people that the ‘local authority window’ in the Local Development Fund [formerly MASAF] will pay for the full cost of such labor and sweat. Please include LDF personnel on the NMVP's entourage: to deal with sticky questions from villagers.

·                   But, also—because the Namasupuni is reportedly a very nutritious grass and potential animal feed—the NMVP will also READ on the decision to organize the Nsanje people into Namasupuni Harvesting Cooperatives. They will put the weed into bales and ship it inland as cattle feed: in support of the milk industry that is now reputed could fetch up to US$100 million in milk exports [the Nation 14 November 2011, p.9]. Nsanje in the mix to solve the forex scarcity problem!

·                   Also place in the NMVP's diplomatic bag return air tickets to Maputo. Upon arriving Blantyre, the NMVP is to head in that direction and once there READ a speech: formally requesting for a cargo ship to be dispatched to Nsanje Port!

·                   While in Maputo, the NMVP will also READ a speech negotiating—on behalf of all Malawians—for the long overdue extension of the western bank of the Shire River into that part of Mozambique. That area—as per the agreement between Roy Welensky and the Portuguese—already belongs to Malawi. It is critical it is done now before the Mozzies figure it out and begin to actively support the border demarcation exercise with the view to permanently annex that part of Malawi. In no uncertain tems the NMVP will READ that we exchanged that sectionwith the right for the Mozambicans to use the part of Lake Malawi around and below Likoma Islands. Now, it is the time the NMVP to READ out a demand that Malawi wants to carry through its economic development initiatives that Kamuzu had pooh-poohed for a long time. Why do we need the West Bank extension? See the NMVP's READING assignment in Chikhwawa.

2.           Chikhwawa

·                   The NMVP to READ a speech informing the people of Chikhwawa of the decision to finally go against Kamuzu’s assessment and arguments. The NMVP will READ that the Bangula Dam—once reputed would have been twice the size of the Gezira Dam in Khartoum, Sudan—will be built using a levy from the fuel fund as well as locked up funds from the British Government. Those monies are still there and should not be linked to the 'Same Sex' issue!

·                   The NMVP will READ that the Bangula Dam will be built at Bangula proper with its backwaters extending as far back as Chikhwawa Boma and, during the rainy season, the waters could reach the edges of Kapichila Falls. Someone shouldn't have built that Mickey-Mouse power station there!

·                   The NMVP will READ that such a massive dam and lake behind will enable Malawi to generate its own national power requirements as well as surplus for export. Watch out Cabora Bassa, you have serious competition now! The electricity so generated will be used to power a massive export industrial development campaign ever seen in Africa.

·                   The NMVP will READ a request to the people of Chikhwawa, in the spirit of national economic liberation, to relocate to the east bank and/ or into Chapananga to make way for the dam’s backwaters.

·                   The NMVP will READ of the decision to establish a new Chikhwawa Boma at Chapananga and READ of the boss's promise to provide full relocation funds and compensation support. No Chinese style 'Four Gorges Dam' forced removals will be allowed here.

·                   Insert in the NMVP's diplomatic bag return air tickets to London. Once there, the NMVP will READ a submission asking the British to finally release the Bangula Dam funds which they dutifully and responsibly refused to surrender to one ‘Bilharzias Kamuzu’ and would have been wasted on Mickey-Mouse capital cities elsewhere.

·                    On the East Bank—similarly this will be the NMVP's assignment in Thyolo’s Sandama and Thekelani—the NMVP will READ a speech promising the arrival of a comprehensive irrigation project driven by water pumped from the new and state-of-the-art Bangula Dam.

·                   The NMVP will also READ a speech proposing that the Bangula Dam becomes a major tourist attraction—besides Lake Malawi—that would include major international water sports. This should accord bored families of foreign direct investors alternative weekend destinations and fun. Besides,  if they are not into 'Sex Tourism', Majete is near by. 

3.           Neno

·                    The NMVP to READ new proposals to bring a sub-Boma to the banks of the Shire River [preferably at Zalewa or Chifunga] so that an alternative irrigation-based agricultural system will be launched for those poor people of Neno currently stuck [like rock rabbits] in the Kambilonjo Hills and cheated that real social and economic development will ever come their way.

·                   The NMVP to READ of the decision to extend the wheat production project on the Upper Nkulumadzi to the rest of Neno so that Malawi can become, at least, 50% self-reliant on wheat production and supply. Like the Bakhresa guy said, way back in 2004 at the Sanjika CEOs Meet [and nobody cared to listen], we could be skimping on scarce forex that way.

·                   The NMVP to also READ a challenge to the Neno people—that where wheat grows so too does barley. Neno must grow barley and beer hops so that Malawi’s beer contains nearly 80% local ingredients. This should address the impending challenges in terms of shortage of beer brewing materials. We have the ready-and-local answers to our economic predicament only if we are not short on action!

·                    The NMVP will READ of the new approach to gold mining on the Neno Hills and the substantial Lisungwi gold deposits Kamuzu kept quiet about! So who is keeping this forex from the rest of us?

·                   The NMVP will READ of the decision to support small scale alluvial gold panning along the Lisungwi River. [More on poorly actioned semi-precious stones when I get to the North.] World Bank: we don't need another mineral study. Let's harvest what we have now. At least that is the 'pragmatist approach' I was taught in the course 'National Development Resource Management'. I wonder if the course is still there and if it is still being taught the right way!

4.           Mwanza

·                   The NMVP to READ of the decision to turn Mwanza into a ‘mandalena’ [mandarin?] country and link the export of these fresh Naartjies [Afrikaans version] to China, through Nsanje Port, of course.

·                   Also, NMVP will READ of the decision to champion for the expansion of Naartjies [Nachesi] concentrates production for the local juice industry and for export!

·                   The NMVP will READ of the decision to shift the sugar cane industry—currently at Nchalo in Chikhwawa—into Mwanza through smallholder growing and processing schemes.

5.           Blantyre and Limbe

·                   The NMVP will READ a speech to all Asians—local and those sneaking into the country through sealed containers—formally rescinding the 'stupid' Kamuzu Decision to ‘remove Asians’ from all small towns and trading centers. It is time to put an end to the 'Tea Room Culture' Kamuzu and some of his still-living cronies bequeathed on an innocent Malawian countryside. 

·                   The NMVP will ‘apologetically’ call for a new working order involving Asians actively participating in processes of revitalizing the Malawian economy. They should no longer restrict themselves to being ‘corner shop’ operators or indulging in that hanky-panky with their cousins in neighboring SADC countries [bringing in rejects and externalizing real funds]. They must join hands with well-meaning Malawians to create a genuine home-grown and alternative industrial base. We need them and such initiatives and forget about half-baked arguments that the foreign multinational corporations, in our midst, can suddenly transform into the 'exporting mechanism' that will develop Malawi and bring in the forex that they are currently externalizing in order to bring in imported consumer raw materials.

·                   The NMVP to READ, loud and clear, that only Asians of Malawian origin and local Malawian vendors—contrary to beliefs and actions of certain ill-informed Malawians—are the only, veritable and reliable source of entrepreneurial as well as economic growth skills that Malawi can speedily muster to resolve the unending forex shortage problems.

·                   The NMVP to READ, loud and clear, that Asians and Malawian vendors have a duty to embrace the opportunities that the Bangula Dam and the Nsanje Port will present. It only through them that industry can organize into ‘Korean-style Chaebols’ involved in manufacturing and export-oriented cartels. The other 'experiments' are too narrow based and booby-trapped to boomerang!

·                   In Blantyre, the NMVP will READ about the business opportunities the Bangula Dam, below the Chadzunda Hills, will present to business especially, the major commercial banks. The NMVP will READ of the fervent request to banks to forgo their nonsensical and feudalistic arguments that property-equals-collateral especially the land-related types. In these new times of Asset Management and Equity-lveraging land is no longer a good collateral. Therefore, the NMVP will READ a question to the banks asking the ‘what they have done with the landed property they have accepted as collateral in business deals gone sour’? Generally: nothing! Instead, repossessed estates are lying idle because banks don’t know the right end of a plough and yet they continue to insist on such collateral. Banks are all the time shooting down the very economy they need for their own growth! Wake up and smell the new coffee, guys!

·                   Like in Lilongwe [later], the NMVP will READ of deliberate policy towards a ‘National Savings’ scheme through 'Diaspora Home Banking Strategies' as well as using Malawi as the ‘Cayman Islands of Africa’; through innovative banking and tax haven strategies.

·                    In Blantyre Rural, the NMVP to READ of the YAMBAKATA [see Claude A1 Sense, July 2011] agricultural, value-addition opportunities waiting to be exploited along the banks of the Shire River and the Lunzu Plain.

6.           Thyolo

·                   In Thyolo—particularly Sandama and Thekelani—the NMVP to READ of the Bangula dam opportunities for the cotton growing and yarn production industry that could be extended into these uplands and beyond.

·                   The NMVP will READ of how Sudan—before they discovered oil in now South Sudan, Darfur and other places—the Gezira Dam and the support ‘industrial engine’ around Khartoum ably sustained the Sudanese economy as a middle income country. Imagine the opportunities that the Bangula Dam—twice the size of the Gezira—will present to landlocked Malawi!

·                   The NMVP will READ about how, in the seventies and early eighties, Kamuzu—trained in the USA and on the banks of the Mississippi River and its elaborate irrigation competence—condemned Malawi to man-made poverty by failing to invest hard-earned peasant surpluses  into an elaborate ad viable national irrigation system. The NMVP will READ of how a proposed National Irrigation Corporation [NIC]—divorced from ADMARC who wasted peasant surpluses on 'stupid' housing project like Kanjedza and Mudi—will lay out a comprehensive low-cost irrigation network throughout the country. The NMVP will READ of how the top boss has finally recognized that the  'libido-sapping' treadle pump is part of the rising the rural-divorce rate!

·                   The NMVP will READ how, through harvesting the waters of the Bangula Dam, the NIC will extend irrigation networks along the Limbe railway line watering projects on all sides of the Thyolo Escarpment.

·                   The NMVP will READ how irrigated tea projects will be organized for greater local and international exports.

·                   The NMVP will READ how irrigated pineapple plantations for local processing and international marketing will be developed [including into Mulanje]. Finally, Kamuzu’s mistake—building a pineapple factory without the pineapples—will be addressed!

·                   The NMVP will READ on how Thyolo and Luchenza—as main irrigation and rail junctions—will thrive into vibrant economic hubs, industry and value-add processing centers.

·                   The NMVP will READ of personal support for the Ndata University and insist it should also include a faculty on Export Horticulture Development. This would enable the industrious people of Chiradzulu to learn of better tunnel and cut flower gardening and international marketing. The NMVP will also  READ of personal support for the Ndata University to establish a Vendor Entrepreneurial Development Center [VENDEC].

7.           Mulanje

·                    In Mulanje, the NMVP will READ of the decision to exploit the bauxite on the mountain.

·                    Insert return air tickets to South Africa and Australia where the NMVP will READ a formal complaint and request to bauxite mining and aluminum processing corporations there: sighting the unfairness of putting Malawi’s bauxite on their ‘exploitation waiting list’. Now is time to move it up or at least assign alternative and early exploitation strategies for Malawi.

·                   The NMVP will take time out to visit Providence Girls Secondary School. While there the NMVP will READ of the proposed Bauxite railway line and sidings that will pass over one of the girls’ hostels! The NMVP will also READ of the citizen responsibility and warn the girls of possible HIV/Aids infections during the construction phases!

·                    The NMVP will also READ and encourage the people Mulanje to maximize their revenues when they sell their pure and clean water to Blantyre and the various mineral water bottling companies.

8.           Chiradzulu

·                   The NMVP will READ of the decision to expand horticultural practices using the water system from Mulanje and/ or an extension of the Bangula Dam irrigation line from the Thyolo/ Luchenza connections.

·                    The NMVP will READ on how Chiradzulu people could extend this expertise to ‘cut flower’ and ‘tunnel farming’ throughout the year and offer them study bursaries at Ndata University.

9.           Zomba, Machinga and Mangochi

·                    The NMVP will READ of the decision to set up various irrigation schemes around Lake Chilwa, the Shire River, Lake Malombe and Lake Malawi in Mangochi, Makanjila and Monkey Bay areas. The NMVP will READ of the decision to keep the Yao people busy through the digging of an irrigation canal connecting the Shire River, via Namwera, to Lake Chiuta and onwards to Lake Chilwa while ensuring a viable irrigation program develops in this region.  

·                   The NMVP will READ will inform the Muslim people of this region that the ability of Malawi avoiding signing onto the ‘Same Sex’ bandwagon now lies in their hands. By transforming the tobacco growing areas of Namwera, Makanjila and Malindi into year-long Irish-potato-growing regions and exporting the same through Nayuchi and Nacala [to Somalia and other Islamic region] Malawi has an opportunity to avoid the ‘Same Sex Challenge’ being posed as well become less reliant on related revenues from the ‘Sex Tourism’ that drives the need for impending 'Same Sex' legislation!

·                   The NMVP will READ of the decision to fully develop the Liwonde International Dry Cargo Port to support exports from this region and the rest on Malawi; especially while the Mozambicans have reservations against Nsanje Port.

·                   The NMVP will READ of the decision to conduct feasibility studies on redesigning the Mangochi Bridge so that it can allow sea-going-size vessels to operate as far as Liwonde Barrage and open up this area to the Dar-es-Salaam corridor and the general North of Malawi.

For the sake of retaining your reading interest, let me pause here for now. In my next blog I will deal with what the NMVP will READ once in the Central and Northern Regions. The thing to note is that this kind of purgatorial pressure—besides being a cheaper process and involving less aggravation—will surely have the NMVP doing one of two things:

i.                    Voluntarily tender in a letter of resignation on conscientious grounds or

ii.                  Become the most devoted disciple; capable of serving a few more masters to come. Who knows this could also be the NMVP's manifesto for 2014 and possible national development agenda?

It is a choice that has to be made. Note that the art of passing the ball back or forcing the hand of an ‘aggrieved’ party always works better than open subterfuge.

The author can also be contacted on zivaiclaude@gmail.com

Identifying the whereabouts of Malawi's Economic Engine

Once upon a time a man decided he would become respectable among fellow men [and women: after all most Malawian men pursue wealth in order to ‘peacock’ before women. Food and health comes a far cry last]. So he went about joining what, in other parts of Africa, they call the wabenzi tribe.

Upon acquiring sufficient sacrifice, he duly trekked to one of our neighboring countries—renowned for its well developed motor assembly industry—whereupon he purchased for himself a ‘reasonably used German machine'.

Once back home, he proceeded to perform the required African peacock dance; including driving his gleaming machine in the fast lane at no more than ten kilometers-an-hour. This, he would habitually do at the height of the flash rush hours; typical of our fuel-starved economy. He needed to be noticed and what better way but inconvenience everyone; including the very female tribes he presumably worked to impress!

Finally, the time arrived—not when he had to court a woman of his heart’s desire—but to take the vehicle in for its mandatory ‘downtime’. So, he spankingly dressed himself up; just in case some ‘wabenzi weak-kneed’ tribes would be lurking there.

At the dealer’s place he was received with the appropriate aplomb; while he pranced in perfect reciprocity. Meanwhile, the dealer ordered the vehicle be taken to the service pits and receive a perfect wash before the check etc.

After the extended waiting time, the assigned mechanic returned; carrying an unexpectedly sour face. He invited aside the dealer—who until now had been outdoing himself serving English Tea to the wabenzi. The mechanic whispered into the dealer’s ear. What followed can only be described as comical.

The dealer literary snatched the cup of tea from off the wabenzi’s lips and asked him, rather brusquely, if he could try the cheaper Japanese dealer in another part of town! It was a dumbfounded wabenzi who learned that the German machine with which he had so far caused a not-so-limited steer had been ‘unscrupulously’ fitted with a Japanese engine! The things our richer neighbors visit on poor us!

I will leave it to another blog to argue how reverse engineering and the court cases between the German and the Japanese car makers—over who owns what part and where in their cars—have come to wreck havoc in our lives. The thing has since cancerously spread to even simple boxes of matches: fitted with what you did not order! Everyone is playing with everyone’s brand names and the end victim, of course, is carelessly poor you and I!

Meantime, the moral of the ‘wabenzi’ intro is to tell you about ‘economic engines’. Yes, just like a car an economy needs an engine. It is so obvious, isn’t? Yet during several public presentations, I have witnessed quite a few surprised faces in the audience upon mentioning ‘economic engine’ and their need in a national economy. Who needs bother with ‘economic engines’ when the economy is already there? Is it because I would be stating the obvious? Is it because it is such an obvious thing and we have taken it for granted for so long? Indeed, even our economic planners and developers have gone mechanistic on this pertinent question building economies and whole agglomerations of ‘new towns’ without even wondering as to what ‘engines’ of growth are needed to sustain the fellow human beings they would be carelessly thrusting into these 'human wildernesses'. For whatever faults it carried, I must admit, in choosing ISI [Import Substitution Industrialization] Kamuzu did ‘uninformedly’ give some thought to what ‘economic engine’ he preferred for Malawi. Not many, thereafter, have exposed their grey matter to this issue.

Specifically, an economy [in this case the vehicle chassis] needs an engine to power itself forward [or in reverse it if one is into weird driving approaches!] More importantly, I am pointing out that there are economic engines and then there are economic engines! Naturally, one has to know this. Otherwise when next you open the bonnet of your national economy don’t be surprised to discover there is a dead donkey lurking in there! Unfortunately, this is the problem with most African economies. For the last few decades their leaders and nationals have been busy carving up the dead donkeys in their economic bonnets and mistakenly calling such futile pursuits 'economic development'.

Of course, most African economies have proved to be funny ‘animals’: capable of running without economic engines; more so after that World Bank/IMF economic castration exercise called ‘Structural Adjustment Programs’ [SAP]. Indeed, for most of us—the non-inquisitive types—we have come to confuse such ‘conceptual impossibility’ as the reality and every day fact. Therefore, we would be forgiven for wondering aloud: ‘how else could a whole nation sit around claiming to be a nation when it has hardly anything of economic value about which it mulls or whiles its valuable time?’ ‘Don’t we wake up every day and go to work? What is that all about?’

Work! You call what you do 'work'? I dare ask. Ever heard of a man who 'worked hard at nothing'? As Africans we have been specialists at applying ourselves at absolutely nothing! In a tongue-in-cheek story I once described the chicanery of a mangy dog that viciously guarded over the rotting contents of its master’s dustbin. Somehow, the dog expected—upon the master’s return—to be rewarded for such futility! Look around you: don’t we have such African dustbin economies and their mangy dogs?

What is in question here is our ability to rise above the mangy dog capability to interrogate the rotting things we call ‘economic engines’. Better yet, can we find the wherewithal in terms of how revitalizing the rotting economic contents in our national dustbins? Even more challenging can we throw out the rot and insert fresh and inviting economic engines into our national economic bonnets? To do that, of course, one needs, first, to know how to differentiate between engines, their functions and where they get put into a car!

For example, there are too many cities in Malawi running around without even dead donkeys in their hoods. Some, for the search of a better cliché, we could call ‘dormitory towns’. But even that is a bender effort because the last time I checked: a boarding school has a ‘dormitory’ section because it has ‘classrooms’. Classrooms are why it is a school! Therefore, a ‘dormitory town’ would invariably need some classrooms: in this case some economic purposes. Generally—if you are mercantilist enough—i.e. as per J. Michael Friend in my earlier blog—the classroom or economic purpose must honestly form part of an export value-chain. This is because only foreign 'revenue-earning' objectives count as economic purpose or the [1] ‘art of pushing one’s thieving hand into your neighbor’s pocket while working hard to remove his thieving hand from your pockets’. Anything else—such as [2] pushing one’s thieving hand into your other pocket while leaving your neighbor’s thieving hand in the other pocket—is as stupid as the word can be stretched. Now, find me any town in Malawi—including the one you live in and the job or work you do everyday—that approximates [1] above. If your preoccupation nears the art in [2] above you are a rent-seeker through-and through and thus you live in a dormitory without the requisite classrooms! Yet—because we are not that inquisitive [remember the wabenzi never checked on what he was buying!] to ensure our economic systems have any revenue-earning engines—we prance around making unfounded claims about being busy. ‘Busy at doing what?’ Can you call running around—better the mangy dog had the presence of mind to lie beside the dustbin and conserve energy—wasting energy at nothing, ‘useless’ work or developing the ‘absentee economic engine’ in this national system? The saddest part is we don’t even know how economic engines look like!

Imagine the blank face I got from a certain senior civil servant when I asked him to tell me:

'What is the economic engine of Lilongwe City?’

‘Capital Hill, of course!’ A few others have subsequently responded to me—with such straight faces that had suggested it was me who had mucus accidentally smeared all over my face.

When I have countered: ‘But, Capital Hill is not Lilongwe's economic engine…’ And proceeded to explain through a simile: ‘That amounts to inviting Jay-Z [the American Rap Singer] into Lilongwe for a series of cabarets at Capital Hotel and then telling everyone—as crowds of youths flock to the hotel, night in night out—that he [Jay-Z] is Lilongwe’s economic engine’.

There will be lot of business, alright, while Jay-Z is in town. It could be a week or, if you are old enough: remember the ‘OK Success Band’ from Zimbabwe? Those guys took months touring Malawi; with everybody flock behind them while our MBC Band performed to empty halls! Finally, the politicians—that too marked the beginning of the 'machona-hating' practice among local and mediocre Malawians—had to be called in to throw OK Success out of Malawi.

But their departure did not render 'rent-seeking' MBC Band an economic engine? Did people flock to see them? Otherwise Maria Chidzanja Nkhoma would be, today, more popular than the 'exportable' Miriam Makeba. In there is a lesson on our ability to differentiate between an 'economic engine' and an 'economic competence'. I will leave full definitions to another blog. Suffice for me to say: a ‘competence’ is a 'skill' of some sort. Unfortunately, most people confuse mere competences—localized and generally rent-seeking skills—for economic engines. A personal competence—your ability to wake up and go to this ‘job’ you go to everyday and expertly perform the tasks therein despite that you are hacking at the wrong and irrelevant national wicket—is not an 'economic competence' and may actually harm the effective workings a sound national economic engine somewhere. That then amount to working at nothing!

Indeed—to belabor the point—since government conferencing in the lakeshore was banned Mangochi and other towns along the lake are reportedly dying. This suggests that ‘one off-events’ can indeed serve as local economic engines or put better local competences. A fine tuned assemblage of local competences—all leading to a perfect and mercantilist ‘thieving’ strategy—can result in an economic engine!

The caveat though is not to confuse economic sophistication—for example the difference between a commodity economy and one at the height of the service industry revolution—for an economic engine. At least that is what I thought until Wassily Leontief told me that the USA—the most developed service industry economy—relies on export of labor [attached to goods and services] to remain the superpower it is!

'Wassily, how do you attach labor to goods and services?' I wondered at first. It is done through industry, of course. The tussle between USA and China is about China dribbling away American opportunities to attach labor to exports!

In other words, beneath the spit and shine of a 'German road machine' invariably operates a dirty and hardworking engine! Capitalism—the shiny part of the car—is a result of a weeklong of cleaning and burnishing the system. Capitalist begins where the dirty parts end. Capitalism is the ‘partying’ and consumptive spending that we all pine for in our national system but only starts when the dirty part is functional. ‘Sunday’ stands for 'sun day': the time to rest from the grime; the time to rest the ‘thieving fingers’ in your neighbor’s pocket. According to Leontief, this is the ‘wealth transfer’—when what has been ‘thieved’ must be stored away from the sight of the victim. It is the tip of a deep lain iceberg. Capitalism is the ‘dormitory’ part after the classes have been attended. In other words, you cannot have Capitalism without dirt and grime—the national industry and/ or economic engine to ‘sustains’ it.

Therefore, Capital Hill is a service industry—a 'sun day' tip [the dormitory], the Capitalist tip of an iceberg deep seated elsewhere. It is the seat of government—the wealth transfer point for the whole of Malawi. Therefore it is not the economic engine of Lilongwe. The Asian shops in Old Town, the emerging shopping malls and Capital Hill itself are the Capitalist dormitories, the leisure points or local competences in support of an economic engine somewhere.

Put graphically, it is the ‘Jay-Z-type’ center-of-attraction. It is the Mecca of nearly 200,000 Malawians who look for their monthly income and sustenance from there. But, it is an ephemeral form of economic engine—a competence. Jay-Z may sing and crowds love him. But it is the crew behind him that makes for his success during the money spinning cabarets. These people are the Jay-Z engine.

Now, here is the confusing part for most Malawians: where we have been failing to achieve effective economic structuring of our economy. What would happen on a night Jay-Z developed a mysterious sore throat and crowds are sent back disappointed; probably never to return again?

‘Then, it has to be Kanengo!’ the triumphant response to realization has invariably followed my rather windy challenge. But, this is quickly replaced by smug looks when it occurs to these people that the tobacco era, that had sustained Kanengo—a mere logistical competence in an economic engine somewhere—had since developed a Jay-Z-like sore throat. Kanengo was never the engine after all!

Some definitions are now in order. What is an ‘engine’? In the wabenzi example above, it is the highly efficient mechanical system that powers the car forward. Before combustion engines, human labor [go to Chipande Old Post Office on Zomba Road learn how Malawians used to carry the colonialist around ‘pamachila’] was the logistical engines. Then, came the donkey; but it was too slow and was replaced by the horse. But the fellow needed to stop for pasture or prepare his own lunch by the roadside while the ‘bwana’ sat in the back seat digesting the meal he had eaten at the hotel! So, the combustion engine took over. However, if you look at the fuel queues outside your office window, you have to wonder if engines are still worth their while! Is fuel the engine now and what of the gearbox? Where does that fit in the need to imbue economic engine speed variability?

To this day, the performance capacity or power of a car’s engine is still measured in terms of the 'number of equivalent' horses that could comfortably pull that chassis. Less horses, less performance; more horses more output: now we turbo charge the engines too! German chassis—before they ostensively went environmental—were generally elegant and thus heavy. Hence, they needed more horses to pull; thus more expensive. The Japanese picked the car manufacturing competence upon which to build their economic engine. They adopted a specific industrial policy that aimed at offering cars that delivered ‘good performance at the lowest possible price’. However, clever guys sometimes fit cheap engines into expensive chassis. And unsuspecting Malawian pretenders pay for these; only to look stupid later! The saddest part is that for the last forty-seven years, Malawi has been running an expensive car with no economic engine or wherewithal to fashion a suitable one. And we persevere in similar futility.

Whichever way, economies need engines and these have to be rated at certain capabilities and/ or horse power. In economics, though, the ‘horsepower’ is not usually about road speed and/or output per se. It is about the ability for that economic system to 'sustainably' sustain the livelihoods of the people in it. So the Capital Hill argument has some sense in it. But is it fair to say just because it sustains people’s livelihoods then Capital Hill is an economic engine? This is where we have been busy at nothing; confusing some things for what they are not and building whole edificial dreams over nothing. The vexing questions are: how long can the Capital Hill sustain itself if the rest of the economy is not sustainably structured? How far can a donkey pull a fully loaded 30 ton freightliner? The answer is: not very far if anywhere. Capital Hill is another Jay-Z; highly susceptible to ‘sore throat’ affliction. It is an institution build on the assumed permanency of a viable economic system elsewhere. To use the car example Capital Hill is exactly that: a ‘steering wheel’. It is ephemeral and/ or peripheral. Future science is already talking of computer-steered cars; leaving the occupants to watch television rather than watching the road ahead! Globalization sometimes boasts of the rise of ‘Stateless Economies’

Of course, ephemeral is a related opposite of permanency. Yet, the latter is a matter of degree; just as dying is in degrees. Some people die after a short illness. Others—seriously ill and detracting the healthy ones from achieving their best—just hang about forever driven by some indefinable bodily constitution and stupid survival power. Indeed, euthanasia—the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease… [Wikipedia.com: dictionary]—is increasingly a public debate in certain societies. Is ‘economic euthanasia’ fair ground for similar debate in Malawi?

This is so given there are certain economies that are so economically perfection-challenged or sub-optimally designed that keeping them alive is like retaining a comatose vegetable into posterity. Such systems have been allowed to linger rather too long because the owners and residents therein have confused their ‘cabbage-like’ existence for life itself or mistaken the fact that they haven’t died yet for the possible availability of some form of a sustainable economic engine therein.

Here in Malawi we have the additional problem that we confuse ‘consumptive living’ with success and happiness. Our lives are no more different from that enjoyed by the WENELA guys of the late 1970s. They would trek to the mines, bring back a bicycle and/or a Gumba-gumba, party off the proceeds and trek back to Wenela! They were merely 'sun day-ing' their lives. In the manner the Malawian economy is currently designed—inappropriately structured—we have become specialists at Capitalist 'sun day' pursuit throughout the week without the requisite economic engine to sustain such ‘partying’. We are competent at 'going to the office'/ to 'the job' without asking: which 'job'? Is our job related and/ or support the 'Capitalist Grime’ section or the Capitalist 'sun day section' and which 'economic engine' does it underpin?

What a depressing thought to realize one has been 'working hard at nothing'! Is it possible Malawi is an agglomeration of pseudo-economic activities lacking perfect economic purpose? Why? Is it because we have confused these for viable entities or because no one has dared to question their structural composition and/ or propose a ‘perfecting solution’—provide veritable economic engines?

But the chickens must come to roost. Now, we are at a stage when the world around us proposes we use Aunt Tiwo and Uncle Chimbalanga as our viable assemblages of economic well being. We also face the threat of a world keener to apply thoughts of euthanasia to our national shores—not to 'see off' our unfortunate Malawian folks—but to pull the plug on our very 'directionless' economic system. These are thoughts and hard choices before us.

However, there are also alternatives. We could start looking for veritable economic engines—from geographical accidents [highly ephemeral and short-term] or within ourselves [see the YAMBAKATA blog for opportunities at developing Exportable Human Software] as well as elsewhere. It is our responsibility to ensure the proud Malawi we love takes a new, high and successful road to personal competence exploitation premised and/ or underpinning properly defined economic engines!

The author can also be contacted at zivaiclaude@gmail.com

Too Much of Nothing is Hurting The Cause

Picture this: the first time I picked up a guitar, I proved a natural. Indeed, my folks, when they heard me strum away with such ease came up with some surprising theories. One of which was that my father—the block I have yet to see fifty-three years later—had been a musician. The stuff some girls fall for! Music hardly bought a piece of stale bread in the fifties… But there I was weaving through every conceivable musical chord.

The problem, though, was that my amateur tutor showed me every chord in the book: A-minor, D-flat, G, F you name it. He even showed me how to tune a guitar. To this day I have the knack to leave even the most seasoned musician with a moist eye or two when I pick up the guitar and pitch it up to levels many a professional just cannot. However, my tutor forgot to show me how to string out and play songs or music! You know why? It is because when I listen to most songs they are but one chord done over and over. That—the simple and monotonous part: rusty chords and harmonies—is what he did not teach me. In other words, I can play chords but can’t play music! Damn!

Do you know someone else like that? I do: African economists and PhDs generally. They know every chord but cannot play music! Somewhere I wrote ‘even Margaret Thatcher, with all her liberalist theories and practice—including banging up the post-colonial British economy into something with a semblance of respectability—would be hard put just cranking up this [an African caricature] economy into action again…’ All chords but no simple music! In other words, Thatcher had the know-how to manage a more sophisticated British system but would struggle managing a simple ‘hand-to-mouth’ African economy. And her problem would have had nothing to do with Khadafy and his motorcade traveling though African with their noses covered up against the ‘African stench’ only to have his own people cover up against his rotting cadaver!

And this is no exaggeration the bulk of our educated Africans have internalized Thatcherite levels of management sophistication—musical chords dexterity—that they hardly understand that African economic systems require but simple and monotonous strum approaches to transformation.

I arrived at this conclusion the other day when I was preparing for a blog on the Leontief Model. It is such a simple thing to understand. It makes you want to look down at all those ‘experts’ filling Malawi’s airwaves and TV screens with their ‘value-chain’ and ‘beneficiation’ talk-talk. They appear to have very little to offer than state the obvious and usually such ‘obviousity’, to an uninformed and/ or hungry man standing in a fuel queue for days on end, is exactly that: aimless chatter by an overfed someone. Too many chords…

But worried that I could be talking out of turn and get caught up by those chordful ‘talking faces’, I dug deeper into Leontief only to discover he had been a Russian-American economist called Wassily and he had had followers/ doctoral students called Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow and Vernon L. Smith. These guys were notable for research into how changes in one economic sector may have an effect on other sectors and they got Nobel Memorial Prizes in Economic Sciences for that. But I also learned that their work has branched off into fields and/ or economic analysis areas such as ‘gross output’, ‘net output’, ‘computable general equilibrium’, ‘economic base analysis’, ‘IPO Model’, ‘Industrial Organization’, ‘EOICLA’, ‘Shift-share Analysis’ etc [en. Wikipedia /Wassily Leontief]. Naturally, we have our own Malawian economist who imbibed these four guys’ intelligence it oozes out of their ears.  One just doesn’t enter their territory and not expect some esoteric backlash.

Though Wassily was around during the post-First World War depression—and Kamuzu [either leaving the USA or already in London] had some inkling about input-output modeling, he appeared not to notice this sense. Indeed, it was only in the late 70s—when Kamuzu had already installed the bulk of his ISI ignominy—that the Input-Output Model became popular. Leontief’s Nobel Prize in 1973 the year of the Yom Kippur War and its implications on sources and supply of global oil. It is thus the year so called 'success story' African economies, including the Malawian economic bubble, went into a tailspin. Yet, poor Kamuzu ignored or did not understand Leontief’s input-output tables and thier implications on Malawi's prefered model of economic development and national accumulation.
Briefly, the Leontief tables analyze the process by which inputs from one industry produce outputs for consumption or for inputs for another industry. One mine filled term I must clear here is 'consumption'. This is not as we, poor you and me, understand it. 'Consumption' is actually more related to 'processing or manufacturing etc'. 
Presented in a diagram, the tables are thus:

In other words, the 'inputs' from one part of Malawi must be used [that is consumed] to 'process' semi- or finished goods that become 'outputs' in a form that markets and/ or consumers want. Implied is an interconnected system with return loops. In that situation, you cannot afford to create national compartments—rural Malawi and urban Malawi where the poor are denied the right to produce certain cash crops and a 'spearhead' middle class tasked to boss it over the poor. This is where Kamuzu's ISI model simply went flat against the Leontief Model. His ‘take off’ industrialization—premised on imported raw materials—all the time unaware of the cyclical impacts of one action on another, soon died on him and finally in 2011 the Kamuzu chickens-of-folly have come to roost!

But despite poor Ngozo’s failures, how does one explain away the rising tribe of modern day talking-faces—armed with so much Leontief hindsight—yet so myopic? Where are they coming from. With so much geniuses why do we continue to live in this fuel-less jungle? Why do they spend so much time talking their heads off about nothing? Why aren't they seriously doing something about the things Leontief dealt with—'gross', 'net', 'base analysis' and/ or 'shift-share analysis'? Isn't this where should arise answers as to where our next gallon of fuel will materialize and in a sustainable manner too?
Chords, chords and chords that is how we were all trained under Kamuzu—that 'One-eyed Philosopher King among the blind'. We were not supposed to know the sources of the Holy Grail and his vision is coming to pass! Noises aside—no one is actually put these chords together to produce the requisite fuel-begetting monotony.

The reality though is clear: this place no longer need chord masters. It needs seasoned musicians. The problem—in this world where economists are increasingly trained into econometrics, ‘unreal’ economics and how to play the 'stock market'—seasoned musicians have gone scarce. Instead, today’s economists play 'Monopoly Economics'. They are more and more involved in share trading. It's monopoly. It's money making rubbish, alright. It is the murky stuff that has since sunk the West into its worst economic quagmire: a dead-end game. Hence, someone recently asked of the muted Euro bail out plans: ‘if it requires so many trillions of Euros to bail out Euro Economies who exactly are these people—in an input-output situation—who are collecting the trillions coming out on the other end?’

The answer is simple: these are Monopoly Trillions. They are exactly that: Monopoly Paper. If you have ever played the Monopoly game you will know what I am talking about. At the end of the game you gather the money-like paper and stash it back into the box; so that you can play the game another day! It is the psychological satisfaction—just like taking your hard-earned MK50,000 into Zambia and change it into millions of Zambian Kwacha. You get to be  a millionaire for an hour! In a  monopoly game no one collects anything!

Unfortunately, the so called ‘smartest economists’ in Malawi today are into that psycho and sometimes deadly cheating against the unsuspecting poor. The saddest part of this story is that everyone is busy pursuing these 'economist': to explain what they don’t know or can’t even explain. They cannot, read my lips, supply us with simple monotonous ways of transforming this economy that Kamuzu condemned into ‘importing luxuries while not exporting luxuries to sustain those luxuries’.

Mouthful you think? Then try this: for the Leontief model to tick Malawi must be taught the monotonous song of exporting something valuable so that it can be able import the luxuries her ‘unreal economists’ were pampered upon as they grew up! Because they don’t dish out paper-made lunches at monopoly tables and once the monopoly games have been played, people need to break off for real meals, bought with real money in the national kitchen, someone must generate that real money! Aunt Tiwo and Chimbalanga kapena?

This requires that the ‘talking faces’ and our ‘unreal economics brothers’ sufficiently explain what goes into a down-to-earth Malawian value chain and where exactly and when this 'beneficiation' mumble jumble they make is going to happen. They really must enunciate what is involved in Leontief areas of ‘economic base analysis’, ‘IPO [input-processor-output] Modeling’, ‘Industrial Organization Modeling’ and 'Structuring Modeling'. That is the stuff Ngozo did not sufficiently understand and out here, in Ngozo's Platonian caves—where the eternal fires are fast cooling down—we are still in the dark and freezing in the scorching African sun. Can our economist explain Shift-share Analysis’ [SSA]—what goes into it and how this is causing fuel queues? How can SSA enables Malawi to get out of the erroneous belief that somehow those companies in Kanengo and Makata—holding foreign licenses for the ever disappearing soft drinks—actually possess veritable answers to our national exporting woes?

Now you know: music [or is it economic development] is not perfection in chord strumming. It is the monotonous and dirty harmonies; fleshed and sweated out into a soulful tune for a transforming and successful Malawi.

Author can also be contacted at zivaiclaude@gmail.com