By Our Correspondent

Why are there so many street protests in recent years? During the Cold War, there were street protests but workers’ strikes. What is it that has happened in recent years to attract these street protests? There were street protests in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and continuing street protests in Israel, Bahrain, and Syria and now in Malawi. Do they have lessons for current leaders? Yes, the visionary leaders are learning something. The first message is that days of honeymoon are over. What do these countries have in common to become attractive destinations for street protests?  Greedy leadership. Although African changed political systems from 1993, the leaders still hold old leadership styles based on greed and corruption. They are clever by talking against corruption during political campaigns but later start practicing the same evil. Some like president Mutharika included nepotism by appointing senior officials from his tribe. The most interesting thing is that African leaders were deceived by macro-economic growth rates. They justified their performance by making reference to these meaningless growth rates. What they forgot is that high economic growth rates do not create jobs. These figures only help to make the leaders become big-headed. Some have even been awarded with silver trophies for excellent performance without assessing whether citizens are living a good quality of life. What they do not know is that the capitalist economic system they implement and supervised are insensitive and only promote elitism and careerism.  A good example is that of president Mutharika who has imposed his sibling brother to take over from him is 2014 as if there were no capable people within Malawi to take over from him. Strangely, the street protests have also spread into the United Kingdom. Those who have returned from the United Kingdom recently lament that the government of primes Minister Cameron is discriminatory with most black British citizens being replaced by unqualified whites based on the color of their skins. When social commentators analyze the cause, it is not criminality at all, although the outcome looks like criminality. Factors contributing to the dissatisfaction among the poor and black people are many and varied.  The main one is marginalization. Others think failure to create jobs by the capitalist economic system in place. Consequently, there is massive unemployment and discrimination. What Prime Minister Cameron and other African leaders forget is that from 1991 after the demise of the Cold War it has been a period of high productivity in almost everything.  Birthrates among humans have quadrupled. Industrial production outputs have tripled by mechanization and labor efficiency. This is why some African countries are bragging about food security not because they are cleverer than others. It is not because magic that is in the family. Today Bingu is failing to sleep because of Civil Society Organizations. He going around the country bragging about the 2.9million votes he had scooped in 2009. That is being irrational. Electoral votes are perishable like vegetables. No one who is clever can talk of votes scooped in 2009. If anything, the best way is to call for a referendum to assess level of popularity. This is why sensible presidents ask pollsters to keep providing them with public opinion information. Capitalism is no longer providing solutions as citizens want jobs, better daily wage and freedom. Presidents are not elected by citizens for them to built multimillion dollar houses as the country does not belong to the president buy every citizen. Citizens want fairness and justice based on the rule of law. Capitalism is in a crisis and needs immediate replacement. This is the job for the IMF and World Bank.

 

 

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