ARE WE DIFFERENT FROM THOSE NSANJE PEOPLE

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What happened in Nsanje is sad. A person has been killed because of false allegations. Someone spread a rumor claiming that this person was evil and was stealing people’s private parts using magic. Like you would be walking and suddenly realize, oh, I am missing my own private parts, I can’t see them, I can’t feel them.

Many people in Malawi, due to lack of exposure, due to poverty, due to lack of education, and due to deep rooted traditional beliefs, cannot distinguish between truth and lies. It is very easy to deceive people, to feed them a lie that they will believe as truth, especially on matters of witchcraft and magic.

Life’s problems, poverty, disease, and others, make people anxious and desperate for solutions to their troubles, and this is why people hold various beliefs as coping mechanisms. Some place their faith in the church, others in traditional healers and in other methods. People in distress also harbor anger, especially toward things or people they perceive as the root cause of their problems.

This is why politicians, recognizing this, take advantage to woo people through deception, lying to them, especially about their opponents, claiming that these rivals are the ones causing or perpetuating the problems people face.

If the people’s problem is hunger, as a politician I just need to come up with a good, false story about my opponent, saying that this opponent is the one causing the hunger. Once I do that, the suffering people will direct all their anger at that opponent and hate him.

If you want to win in politics, you just need to take time to understand what the people’s problems are in this area or in this country. Is it hunger? Disease? Lack of fuel? Lack of money? And once you have done that, you need to come up with a good story to tell the people, claiming that this or that person is causing these problems. That without this person, you would have food, electricity, foreign exchange, and so on. Even if you fail to promise them that you will solve those problems, you just need someone to point a finger at.

Stories about witchcraft, killings, bringing plagues upon people, and conspiracies, these especially thrive in our communities because people believe them. Even educated people, and some who pray devoutly.

It is very sad that a person has been killed in Nsanje because of lies, primitive beliefs, the anger of poverty, and people’s fear.

Those who killed him genuinely believed that the person was a witch. They did not do this as a joke. In killing him, they believed they were saving themselves and also saving their area.

One person who was greatly victimized by such lies, especially during that campaign period, was President Chakwera. Because politicians know that people are easy to sway as long as you find a believable story, they made many accusations against Chakwera.

But now some people see that no, many of those problems were not caused by Chakwera. Others also see that some things Chakwera said were true.

But many people took advantage of the problems in the country and blamed the national leader so that people would become angry and remove him from office.

Even some from the ruling party also found their own narratives aligned with people’s problems. Politicians, all of them, use people’s emotions to achieve their own goals.

I condemn what those people in Nsanje did. But I know that the problem is not them, but our beliefs, where we come from, poverty, and other factors. Before we accuse them, let us ask ourselves if we are not like them. How many people do we consider witches, and given the chance, we might assault or kill them? How many people do we think kill others? What beliefs do we hold about witchcraft and magic for which we have no evidence, yet we believe them strongly and unquestioningly? So, are we really different from the people of Nsanje?

Written by

Shadreck Chikoti

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