Celebrating a predecessor's death

DANISO: Now that PP has danced and celebrated on Bingu's grave, what next?

BENJA: It's a shame really. A very mean thing to do.

DANISO: Uncouth. Crass. Cheap. It's like a son who instead of commemorating his father's death, chooses to celebrate the wealth he was willed as result of the death.

BENJA: I sometimes wonder whether JB has advisers.

DANISO: I doubt it, at least not ones who mean her well. If she had, do you think she would've been abusing government machinery to be harassing David's mother?

BENJA: You mean Madonna? I agree. How can she be so mean spirited, a practicing Christian?

DANISO: Whatever happened to 'Love thy neighbour'? Especially a neighbour who's helping you in her own little way?

BENJA: Well, it's been a funny few days. First off the block was DPP lauding Bingu as the best president Malawi has ever had.

DANISO: I think it's in our genes to sanitise the characters of the dead, to gloss over their flaws no matter how tarred. No wonder we call a dead body a chief even if it's that of a village idiot.

BENJA: True. Employees fall over themselves praising departed colleagues "who the employer will've  great problems replacing, if at all." You've to wonder.

DANISO: So too Bingu. In the year since, we've already forgotten his long list of flaws. The most nepotistic president ever, one who barely tolerated people from certain tribes and even took great pleasure in publicly insulting some of them.

BENJA: We've forgotten that the economic mess Malawi is going through today started during his second term when the Kwacha was being artificially propped up. We've totally forgotten that were he still alive today, Malawi would be in a far worse position than it is in now.

DANISO: We can't even remember the arson attacks against critics, the arrests, even a murder, his unexplained wealth when not long before he was rescued by his predecessor, he used to be both a driver and a conductor for his own minibus, a man who, according to a man who used to be his cook, would budget for and buy only two chickens a month.

BENJA: I suppose his people have all the right to love him, after all many of them were uplifted along with him. But to foist the second term Bingu on all of us as Malawi's best president, is an insult. An insult to the SMEs whose businesses had to shutdown in the face of an all conquering business juggernaut from his tribe that has diversified into everything, even supplying food and firewood to prisons.

DANISO: Do you remember the poor orphans whose land was grabbed? Malawi's best president? My foot! Let me have a Green. I'm boiling inside just at the memory of him.