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The title of this article is broad, and the
questions that could ensue from a more comprehensive interrogation of the
concepts named in that title could lead to lengthy discussions with little
relevance to the immediate needs of troubled Malawi. As such, this article will
attempt to make concise and direct linkages between the seemingly abstract
aspects of the concepts involved with pragmatic outputs which necessitate
collective political action.
Firstly, let me place the assumptions undergirding much of my thinking in the open. Paradoxically I consider myself an optimistic-pessimist, and what I mean by that is this - I do not think it is of much use to presuppose that any human being in most cases would opt to work selflessly in the interest of the collective when the opportunities to do the contrary are readily available. My proposal are thus informed by this rather cynical view, and often I attempt to find synergies within our rotten systems that ultimately synchronize the egocentric and self-centred actors of that system into complementary counterparts for positive change. If done right, I am convinced that the newly emergent stakes arising from a re-ordered social setup would motivate the inherent greed in humanity to protect against a compromise of that system which could potentially undermine the welfare of themselves as a collective - even though that itself would be motivated by an entirely self-centred attitude to preserve self and only just self. By being so modest, it means that my predications for a better society can only ever be understated, and that anything beyond the very basic expectations would be very great news.
Malawi, needless to say, groans with the hunger to be sovereign. The definitions of sovereignty abound, masquerading within the disambiguating terms of self-determination, self-reliance, self-validation, and even for the more liberal thinkers, greater global relevance. In a crude manner, sovereignty seems to be subtly presented as the grand eventuality of nationalistic pride emanating from the acquisition of a largely collective realization of a distinct civilization that accords members of that national society the right to be ethnocentrically arrogant. An arrogance emanating from a well-developed collective psyche rooted in self-validation, self-determinism, and global visibility.
Nationalism would thus entail not just the camaraderie that comes to envelope the members of the society in question, transforming them into a community of brothers and sisters who also inseminate each other while inviting external others to participate in the greatness of their communal life, but more critically the mutual cooperation in the protection of that which is considered central to the holding up of that particularly adored society. While there can be no consensus as to what fundamental pillars these protected social artefacts really are – even though the modalities through which material and to some extent immaterial needs are met within that society would constitute some of those central features – the various spheres at which individual members of that society find their stake and access into the material and immaterial opportunities of that society become the egocentric motivators for protecting and reinforcing the status quo. In which case, greed and self-centeredness within the right kind of societal setup would propel to varying extents fairness and justness – but not on account of a strong belief in that principle, but rather on account of the strong stake in the sphere from which one’s limited livelihood is drawn from and sustained. To that effect, a rewired society whose systemic tentacles extended deep into the many spheres and spaces from which various members obtained sustenance should, even against the very design of its members, accommodate symmetrical applications of procedures and stipulations that would necessarily benefit the whole. Indeed within this abstraction resonate the problem of change – that is the ability of a society to pragmatically deal with the changing circumstances under which it finds itself over the course of time. This problem is perhaps too large to be contested on this blog, and suffice it to say that it may be tackled to the best of my abilities in later posts. But, if the rewired society is sufficiently self-preservationist, then pragmatism propelled by that same essentially egocentric individualism should activate sufficient quantities of the social system to induce change.
And as such, the role of culture – another very problematic concept to even define let alone incorporate into developmental efforts – would become devolved into localities in which culture would be informed not by the ancestors so much as it would be informed by necessity; a necessity everywhere cognizant of the strict limitations that undergird the liberties that everyone symmetrically enjoys. To that end, the ordinary expectation of sovereign and nationalist arrogance is not intentionally an attitude towards others, but rather a focused and coordinated effort to preserve that which enables people to live similar to one another, and yet independent of one another – truncated inextricably into a binding nationalism obtained from an assuring set of societal stipulations and organizations which ultimately make the said people a proud sovereign.
Then comes the discussion having to do with the harnessing of greed into a system that transforms it into an energy for progress. The answers would obviously vary from place to place – or to put it more accurately from country to country. But in as far as Malawi goes my proposal is somewhat modest that, and even with the litany of a growing number of political actors, a political resolution is more than likely the most eminent origin. The greed engine continues to churn in Malawi and yet within a context of ever growing stakeholders to the political processes compounded by their increasing power to unsettle and potentially dethrone establishments, the greed of populism itself which in Malawi’s history has fed patronage and state-clientelism would attempt to prolong its place on the Malawian political scene by instituting adaptations to the system that promise a fairer share of the national pie, including power, to the litany of political actors. That is the first foreseeable automated positive outcome of greed. And through a set of unpredictable and greed-informed steps, the minor reforms should lead to other reforms with the impact of limiting the political space in the arenas of the elite while concurrently widening the space of the previously marginalized. Greed would do this in order to ascertain its own place within the societal setup. Indeed focused efforts will churn on in the back-and-foregrounds in the spheres of civil society and other non-state actors which would contribute to spurring on this one-dimensional progression of our society – I however refrain from declaring that even such humanitarian acts would truly be motivated by the need to serve others. My assumption is that while there are some people who do care about others, most of us do not – and so we must bank upon this parasite and pathological human condition to somehow work itself into a situation that enables more and more people who do not care to be accommodated into this new form of social organization which cares for all of us precisely because we do not and will not care.
The question of dependency – the seemingly perpetual affliction of financial self-insufficiency – works most powerfully within a context in which the very benchmarks whereupon a people can judge for themselves the progress made in their country are lacking. Depending on others for financial reasons could be the result of good and convincing reasons, and perhaps – even though the evidence is narrow – help put a country in a position to catapult itself onto a better and more sustainable trajectory. But while economic or financial dependency has numerous criticisms which have been extensively discussed by various political economists and economists alike, the social effects of dependency in as far as the national psyche is concerned in the absence of internal benchmarks means that a nation remains always divided as to the exact role that external financiers ought to play. And this is not to the very simplistic and narrow definitional connotations of what the previous statement reads, but more deeply in the spheres of livelihood which are largely sustained not by a wide and everywhere symmetric system but rather by patronage, exclusion and to put it simply “GREED”. In a consistent manner as applied to the earlier view, the wells from which one’s water is harvested and from which one’s bread is drawn directly inform discourse disguised as an objective plea to maintain, reform or scrap a particular arrangement which is yet only informed by the egocentric desire to protect one’s well. Thus, should the assertions mentioned above indeed culminate into a greed informed state of progress, dependency as the epiphenomenal outshoot of internal instability within a fierce contest of ensuring the preservation of livelihoods naturally loses its destabilizing impact and becomes a stench to the inhabitants of the particular social order whose maturity has allowed it a greater degree of self-reliance and global-significance. Dependency then comes to be seen as an warranted access into the cultural independence of that social organization which must be resisted and blocked – as seen in South Africa for instance even though its complexities are very unique from those of Malawi.
In essence therefore, the problematic concepts of sovereignty, nationalism, culture and aid dependency appear to me as the occasions under which ordinarily compatible concepts are misaligned by a missing and symmetrical stake that causes or accrues into a collective adherence. I do not see too many contradictions within the concepts themselves so much as I see contradictions within the mode of business as it is in the motherland and how these concepts fail to be appropriated into that largely undefined context. After all, while indeed the actions that surround such concepts are varied and versatile, the concepts themselves fix actions as loaded activities aimed at enforcing the more or less static implications of those concepts. And as such, those static features are what allow the greed-informed progress which conjures up a system as a popular stake to more stability adhere to the static expectations of such concepts. Even within this pessimistic view, should a political leader decide to fast track the processes leading up to such an eventuality, it would not offset the expected compatibility to these concepts and self-protecting features that would allow them to remain stable and yet attentive to environmental shocks – whatever they might be, social, political, economic or ecological – affecting the said society. As such, I remain optimistic within this pessimism that ours remains a country steadily primed to rise and become great.
