Gizzards of governance: Why we must feed our leaders

Dear Judge Mbadwa,

My Lord, I hear people are casting aspersions on the speakers who recently led the People’s Demagogic Party (PDP) rally at Bvumbwi in Tcholo for simply stating the quiet part out loud: that politics in Nyasaland is, and has always been, the private business of eating by the incumbent politicians.

Why, I ask, are citizens clutching their pearls when our leaders treat the national treasury like a village wedding buffet? It is, after all, the natural order of things.

I must confess my surprise at the public outrage over this “eating time” proclamation. You and I both know that in our part of the world, public office bearers are feted by society precisely so they can govern well.

In my own case, My Lord, I bear no anxiety as a citizen because I was raised in a disciplined household where the finest portions of the Sunday chicken, specifically the nthutumba (gizzard) and the choice cuts of chinyopiro, were strictly reserved for the father of the house.

Step into any village funeral, and you will observe the same sacred hierarchy: local chiefs, village heads, and their indunas retreat to a secluded inner room, dining on specially prepared delicacies while the average villager makes do with the smoke of the kitchen fire. Even church leaders and visiting dignitaries are invariably served the best cuts before anyone else has even washed their hands.

It was through these formative lessons that I came to understand a fundamental biological truth: you cannot handle heavy, serious matters on an empty stomach. A malnourished patriarch would surely fail to manage his household, let alone pay school fees or supervise siblings. How, then, do we expect our political leaders to perform miracles when we deny them their rightful nthutumba? Surely, those prized morsels provide the vital nutrients required to stimulate high-level statecraft.

My Lord, have you paused to consider the colossal cognitive load carried by our senior government officials? If some of them are merely being offered the scrawny necks (makosi) of the national economy while others carve out the breasts and thighs, should we really complain?

Consider the immense intellectual bandwidth required to manage our most pressing national crises. Ensuring an adequate supply of LP gas at a time when charcoal sellers are rapidly converting our remaining forests into ash, or conjuring foreign exchange out of thin air to stabilize fuel and commodity prices; these are not tasks for the faint-hearted. They demand the sharp and well-oiled minds of leaders who are exceptionally well-fed.

We cannot afford to starve our politicians when they carry the monumental burden of rescuing this country from the economic abyss into which the preceding Cockerel regime plunged us.

We must, therefore, insist that the PDP gurus feast on the finest national cuisine so they remain in peak physical and mental shape to steer the ship of State. If anyone asks my opinion, I say let them eat to their heart’s content. After all, history teaches us that real African leaders cannot possibly govern effectively if they are suffering from political marasmus or kwashiorkor.

And if, by some tragic miscalculation, our leaders manage to consume the entire national carcass right down to the bare, bleached bone, leaving the rest of us to chew on the shadows, we can at least take comfort in one undeniable fact: they with full stomachs, sacrificed their digestion for the motherland.

Your resident cynic,

John Citizen

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