To:
The Foreign Secretary (UK)
The Secretary of State (USA)
EU foreign affairs’ chief (EU)
Dear Mr. Hague, Mrs. Clinton and Lady Aston:
The UK diplomat has been declared persona non grata in Malawi after our president lost confidence in him. However William Hague, the UK foreign secretary chose to look at the issue from an ethnocentric point of view. What matters to him is that Britain still has its confidence in the diplomat and that Malawi’s concerns are not worth even being considered.
Well and good, that is his choice.
My concern however is around why you are taking Malawians through psychological torture. Why go to the media and make suggestive statements through your foreign offices in Malawi? If one of the conditions to aid or whatever else Malawi benefits from the relationships we have together is the UK diplomat being tolerated in the country at all cost then why don’t you just act accordingly. Refer to the agreements we have signed together and name our fate. That will help us to move on as we would have known who is truly with us and who is not.
Let me just remind you that Malawi like your countries is a sovereign state with its own political, economical and moral problems. We are young. We only got our independence from Britain 50 years ago. Unlike South Africa, Zimbabwe, Australia and other countries rich in minerals that were colonized by the British, our colonizers did not pick our land as a place they wanted to settle themselves and as such they did not do much in terms of development. In other words, we were delayed by the period they were here as we were not in control. Yes, they had a few farming projects here and there but in most cases they used our country as a reserve for laborers.
We had to start almost from scratch ourselves when we got independence in 1964. Progress however has been slow due to the fact that:
1. We are land locked
2. The international market system is in such a way that you are in control
3. We don’t have much in terms of natural resources
4. Our blind loyalty to friends like you, especially the UK our colonial master. We placed you above us and not alongside us. We allowed you to boss us a bit too much. Sorry we thought you were a god to save us from our misery but that has kind of worked against us.
5. Natural disasters (floods and droughts) and natural epidemics (HIV AIDS, Malaria thanks to President Clinton and Bill Gates for all that they are doing in Malawi to help with this etc)
6. Incompetence and laziness on our part (we are not proud of this but it is the truth)
7. We rebranded ourselves a bit too much to identify with our colonial masters. Because of that we don’t like ourselves as much as we like them. We would rather either have them come over to our country and call the shots or have our educated among us go to their country and be ‘used.’ We have nurses and doctors, engineers etc that we have trained using our meager resource with the hope that they would develop this country move to your countries. We cannot do much about it because we are a democratic country and you lot are 200/250 years ahead of us in the game.
8. Our education system as well is in such a way that we are taught all the good things about you and why we need you. We admire your countries so much that our wish after education is to come live with you there or live like you here. We don’t learn much about ourselves, if anything only the negatives. We have completely sidelined the things that we could have explored and developed about ourselves. The things that we survived on before the British came could have evolved and still be useful today or even us sharing them with others around the world but we can’t because our education belittles them over yours.
9. The culture conflict that comes with your demands over aid as well is a source of confusion among us. The disunity it causes slows us down a big time. You are insisting that your tax payers want us to legalize homosexuality but we have made it clear that we don’t want. Come rain come sun shine will not buy that nonsense. First we don’t want you telling us what to do and we don’t want homos in our country. It is that simple. Our culture and our faith do not permit it.
Let me point out here that it is amazing to watch the excitement that has engulfed the UK due the pending royal wedding. For anyone who knows British history, especially us in Malawi as we learn a great amount of it in class, we understand the excitement. It is a great expression of British culture that has stood the test of time and modernization.
On the other hand it is painful to see a country that could cherish its culture like that refuse us to keep and enjoy ours in the way we have it.
10. Our over dependence on aid puts us in a situation whereby you are in control of things in Malawi and we are not. You decide when, what and how and we follow. Our getting it wrong means we have not done it the way you wanted us to do it. They other problem is that sometimes even if we do it the way you want us to do it once you decide to do things differently you do it without a care of what we think about it. After all it is your money. You make pledges but you don’t deliver.
We have had it with Canada; their aided projects were working very well in Malawi. Thing were working great but at the last minute they decided to pull out because they thought the projects were not economically viable for Canada. They instead opted to go work with countries in the Americas. That was Canada choice but it is us who are now suffering from that action.
There is more I could have written but I know you are busy people. My request to you is simple, don’t keep us in suspense, the nature of your aid itself keeps us in suspense, please name our fate and let us move on. Your aid helps us a great deal, truth must be to be told, we baldly need it but we want it as aid, that’s it, aid. Listen to us and let us work together not the other way round.
The nation is divided as it is right now; we need each other now than before to move in the right direction. Knowing that you are going or staying will give us enough leverage to talk and do things on our own that will help our country whether with your help or not.
Thank you for taking time to read this. We wish Prince William and his bride all the best. We wish President Obama all the best as well as he launches his reelection bid.
Lady Aston, would you please use your influences to end the bloodshed in Libya rather that help it prolong for the sake of seeing Ghadafi go. It is not nice to see Africans die helplessly with you lot hovering over them like that.
Thank you,
Ndirande Love
Concerned Malawian Citizen
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