THE FACE OF A LOSS

From a very young age, I have been fortunate to find myself in spaces that many only dream of, spaces of politics, power, and leadership. Often, it is my skills, my gifts, and my creativity that open these doors for me. Over the past few years, I have been privileged to contribute meaningfully to the political landscape, including the creation of certain mantras that gained national popularity and were widely used during campaign season.

In every political contest, there are winners and losers. Accepting defeat is never easy. Yet I had the honor of working with a leader who loved peace, was calm, and had a vision. That is why, even when many of us felt that conceding was premature, he did not hesitate to do so. He often reminded us: “This is not my permanent home. I live here as if I am on rent, and one day, I will move out.” He told us this just a year after he got into the palace.

The truth is, as an individual, I did not lose. It is the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) that lost. The MCP lost its role as the governing party through its President. And in reality, it was the Presidency that lost, not Lazarus Chakwera the person.

But loss itself demands a face. People need someone to project their disappointment onto. They need something tangible to embody their frustration. They need a person they can laugh at, blame, criticize, or even ridicule. For that reason, some of us have become the face of electoral defeat. When people say “the MCP is out of government,” they are not just speaking of the party as an institution. They see individuals, people who carry the image of that loss. To them, those people are the visible symbol of MCP’s fall from power.

People expect to see you broken, struggling, stripped of glory, and weighed down by hardship, because as the face of loss, you are expected to live up to their expectations. If they see you happy, smiling, or moving on with joy, they become unsettled.

It is like someone who has just lost a loved one. Society expects them to mourn, to weep, to carry visible sorrow. But if that person is found laughing, celebrating, or showing no signs of grief, people feel almost betrayed. In the same way, many want to see me carry the visible marks of defeat, to look discouraged, to appear wounded, or at least to act as though the pain is still fresh.

People remind you not to forget the suffering. They look for signs that you are hurting.

They seek confirmation that the loss has left its scars on you, that you are human enough to show the weight of disappointment. To them, your grief validates their own. Your brokenness becomes the mirror of their frustrations.

A loss, after all, needs a face. It needs someone or something people can point to, touch, laugh at, talk about, pity, and weave stories around.

For both sides, winners and losers, to truly heal, a loss requires a representation. It needs a living image to embody its weight and meaning.

That is what we must represent, a character who is: The Face of a Loss.