Viral blasts from years ago show DPP “heroes” shredding the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) administration over fuel hikes and dry pumps. A pathetic comedy of errors: they promised a paradise they clearly forgot to pack once they moved into the offices. Oh, how the tables have turned, and how quickly the legs have buckled under them.

Today, the DPP leadership sits exactly where their rivals once did, staring down the barrel of a dry fuel pump. The vitriol they once poured out like illicit gin has come back to haunt them, but with a more bitter vintage. The situation hasn’t just stagnated; it has deteriorated into a full-blown farce.

Across Malawi, filling stations are “bone-dry” monuments to a vanishing economy. When fuel does miraculously appear, it carries a price tag that suggests it was distilled from liquid gold rather than crude oil. At $3.85 per litre (K6 687.00 per litre), Malawi’s pump price is a world-class contender.

On the black market, it hits $12. Conducting this orchestra of historical hypocrisy is Shadric Namalomba, the DPP’s mouthpiece-in-chief, who spent years obsessively attacking MCP press briefings with the frantic energy of a man desperate to drown out his own party’s echoes. Back then, Namalomba was a master of the “No excuses” school-of-thought, famously rubbishing the idea that the Russia-Ukraine war had anything to do with Malawi’s misery.

He’d mockingly wonder if the missiles in Kyiv have GPS trackers set specifically for the Malawian economy. He would rant: “Our neighbours—Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and South Africa—must be living on a different planet, because they’ve managed to survive the same war without collapsing. Only here do we suffer this way, under a leadership so impressively devoid of vision and wisdom (utsogoleri opanda luntha, utsogoleri opanda nzeru) that they’ve managed to make us the war’s only ‘accidental’ casualty in southern Africa.” One wonders if the Minister has found that missing “wisdom” in his new Cabinet office, or if the war—now between US and Iran—has suddenly become much more real now that he’s the one behind the desk.

Oh, brilliant. Our “forward-thinking” energy policy is such a triumph that we’re currently front-runners for a gritty reboot of the Stone Age. It’s a masterclass in the domino effect: first the power takes a permanent vacation, then the pumps follow suit out of pure solidarity, and now—shocker!—the taps have officially joined the strike.

Truly, a standing ovation for this seamless descent into prehistoric living. I mean, who doesn’t love the “humiliating reality” of living in a major urban centre where using your own toilet is a luxury? It’s truly a visionary return to a primitive existence.

Since we’re so hopelessly addicted to scapegoating our own incompetence on imaginary ghosts, why stop there? Let’s shamelessly pin our pathetic power and water collapse on the US-Iran conflict while we’re at it. It’s the perfect cover for this brand of mindless, hollow leadership.

Then there is Sameer Suleman, the firebrand MP for Blantyre South East and current Speaker of Parliament. In 2023, Suleman and his DPP colleagues turned the august House into a theatre of the absurd, donning sackcloth to mourn the government’s “cruelty”. At the time, fuel was a mere $1.50 per litre.

Suleman spoke with such vehemence and fervour prodding government to scrap the fuel levies, vowing that if the government dared raise the price by even K500, the blue party would goad its rank and file to take to the streets in a righteous fury. Of course, the streets are full, yet frozen. Instead of Suleman’s shouting masses, we have a silent motorcade of the stranded, waiting for a phantom saviour while the rest of the city thumps the hot pavements on foot.

We’ve swapped the grit of the strike for the slick sheen of executive ties. Our total failure hasn’t vanished, it’s just been dressed up as a “global trend,” and we’re all clearly desperate to stay in style. The satire writes itself: a government that once campaigned on the “stupidity” of their predecessors now asks for “patience” and “understanding” while charging four times the price for half the supply.

It seems in Malawian politics, the only thing that flows more freely than fuel is the audacity to forget one’s own scathing speeches. Bottom line: It turns out “leadership without vision” is a lot easier to diagnose from the opposition benches than it is to cure from the Cabinet office, especially when the only thing currently “boiling” in the Warm Heart of Africa is the rage of a pedestrian nation watching its leaders eat their own words at $12 a gallon. The post When tab