Live From Airstrip One … Hope You Know Newspeak

I will not lie, I am very unqualified to do this but the since Bible says ‘just like iron sharpens iron, man should learn from another’ and that ‘no one is without sin’ hence the motif: to err is human, I will risk it. In this article I will use George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen-Eighty-Four to tear apart President Mutharika, who to me, stands for the axis of evil in Malawi.

Man is a political animal by nature, said Aristotle and even if we try to defy this assertion, decisions of politicians will soon impact on our lives.  Take DRC: politicians disagree and war ensues, the politicians hide and the civilians bear the blunt. I hope you now see why indifference is costly, it’s better to be part of the decision that to hear of it.

Cover of Animal Farm: Centennial Edition

“Nineteen-Eighty-Four” is a dystopian novel revolving around one Winston Smith an editor of a state controlled paper in the Ministry of Truth. The country is under the rule of Big Brother and mind control, police rule and a hardship are the rule of the day. I will not summarise the book here, I just need a few analogies.

To me Mutharika is Big Brother, slowly turning the nation into a police state. This, as manifested by the interrogation of Chancellor Colleges’ Political Science lecturer, Blessings Chinsinga, the shoot to kill order, the bill giving police more powers and yes the brutality of the police and their swiftness at handling opponents of Mutharika like in the case of Reverend Levi Nyondo and Lonjezo Sithole.  How I wish they were this swift when our homes are being robbed.

Malawi is now divided into three castes: the inner party of DPP big wigs and their Big Brother; the outer party made of the presidential tribesmen, the Lhomwes and then the Proles that is the rest of Malawians- we agreed that we would be equal but it seems they changed the pact to “some people are more equal than others.”