...No, we need even more festivals

By Jai Banda, CEO, Entertainers Promotions

The year 2012 has seen a number of cultural/music festivals taking place in Malawi. Despite a number of festi-vals having taken place, it cannot be argued that Malawi is holding too many cultural/music festivals.

At the recent World Press Freedom Day debate on 5th May, 2012, Arnold Munthali, online editor for Blantyre Newspapers Limited, lamented that Malawi government press releases can only be relayed to the Malawian media via a 20th century relic, the fax machine. This belies the strides the world, including the African continent, have made in harnessing the power of the Internet.

I was bed-ridden that Sunday morning, the 11th of March 2012. I had just survived a motorcycle road accident, and was nursing a serious fracture on my right hand's phalanges. As happens under such circumstances, I was in a PoP. This is the day our former president, the late Bingu wa Mutharika, conducted the ground- breaking ceremony for Blantyre - Zomba road (John Chilembwe Highway) at Kachere trading centre in Blantyre.

Joyce Banda, the new President of Malawi, has joined an exclusive club that only has her and Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Banda ascended to power last Saturday following the death on April 5 of former president Bingu wa Mutharika who suffered cardiac arrest aged 78.

History-making Joyce Banda , who rose to prominence in Malawi as a champion for women's rights and empowerment, yesterday became the second female African head of state of modern times after Liberia's Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Life in Nsanje has become synonymous with floods. For 78-year-old Ester Kumsida of Kaso Village, T/A Mulolo in Nsanje, this is more than a mere story; it is a life experience.

You've been in an accident – where do you go? If you said the emergency department you could be wrong.

I

thought each and every parent in Malawi is, by now, aware that education is the real key to success. Looking at the sons and daughters of Malawi who are financially and socially doing well because of education, I expected that all parents would also wish to see their children drinking from the pots of education.

That period stretching from 20 to 24 January this year it drizzled ceaselessly in many parts of Malawi. This was after a lengthy period of silent supplication to the good Almighty Lord that heavens should open up as the country was going through a blistering dry spell.

There was a time I literally worshiped beer. I never even believed that beer has a devastating impact on human life. But this lackadaisical thinking of mine came to a halt on May 28, 2011 when I experienced torture, courtesy of beer. I even decided to quit drinking altogether.

We are living in dangerous times. Stroll along the road, in broad daylight, and you will meet the devil waiting for you. A devil incarnate, probably robed in white like a true saint, he will shoot you a warm and affectionate smile. Of course, he will talk to you, laugh with you and even make friends with you.

The recent running battles between street vendors and the Malawi Police Service, under the auspices of the Lilongwe City Assembly, convey one clear message about policy makers in the country: They consider street vending a problem that needs to be controlled. Quite an unfortunate perspective, it has to be said from the outset.

There is nothing fiercer than a woman scorned. A woman in fury. I never really took that saying seriously until I attracted the wrath of a woman.

There is always a past. A new-born may, for instance, be younger in minutes but old in seconds.

Yes,they violate press freedom

BY Sly Gwaza, Freelance Independent Journalist

The treatment of journalists at Presidential airport press conferences continues to be a disgrace. What happened in Lilongwe on 21 November on the arrival of the President from his holiday is a stark reminder that press freedom in Malawi is still under siege.

  The Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (Macra) recently awarded four television licenses and radio broadcasting licenses to some of the firms that had applied for licenses.

She says she saw ‘it’ in mid-air, as she flew across the clear skies into Malawi from South Africa’s OR Tambo International Airport in the early 2000s, and confirmed it during touch-down at Lilongwe International Airport and, later, Blantyre’s Chileka International Airport.

Death is life's hardest reality, says the Holy Bible, but it is a perfect tool for sharpening our understanding. It gropes into human affairs and leaves indelible marks which oftentimes refuse to be erased by tears or empathy.

After a busy work schedule, I had no intention to go out on this particular weekend. While glued to MBC TV, my spouse commented on a local tourism documentary, saying she wished we visited Cape Maclear.

Is the civil Society the ‘big idea’ for the twenty-first century, or will the idea of the civil society-confused, corrupted or captured by elites- prove another false horizon in the search for a better world? This is a question Michael Edwards (Director of the Ford Foundation’s Governance and Civil Society Program) in his book Civil Society, puts forward to all of us who value the social- economic and political emancipatory role, explanatory power and practical support of the civil society.