AS WE MOURN JZU: Malawi needs a heroes acre

By Lyson Sibande

I strongly wish our government had a heroes acre where John Zenus Ungapake Tembo would join great political heroes of our independence and democracy that went before him. The likes of Orton Chirwa, Kamuzu Banda, Chakufwa Chihana, Rose Chibambo and Bingu WA Mutharika among others.  

When these heroes are buried in their home villages, there is no proper care given to their graves because with time, families neglect the grave sites due to finances and other reasons.

But such heroes are part of our history. A country that can’t preserve its history can’t inspire the future generations. One of the reasons we are failing to move forward as a country is because our youths lack inspiration.

Yet we have our forebears with a lot of inspiring heroic accomplishments which paved the way for us.  Only if we were able to visit their graves and read and learn about them in our school curricula and media, we would connect with their spirits and get energized to carry on from where they had left.

Would Tembo deserve burial at heroes’ acre if we had any?

I don’t mean to write a eulogy for Tembo, but I think he was not an easy man to mourn over. It gets complicated now when the generation that lived through the MCP dictatorship still controls the entire narrative that defined him. In Malawi, predominant public opinion about public and political figures prevail from narratives cooked out partisan interests and emotions of opinion leaders, not investigated and analyzed facts.

When many in our generation hear about John Tembo, they see an evil man who was behind every type of evil that was committed by the MCP dictatorship between 1964 and 1994. For the first decade of my life, I grew up in the 80s and early 90s, I have an idea what the name of John Tembo meant in those years, even for us primary school kids.

Tembo was feared and there were a lot of conspiracy theories surround him. In fact, the strategies of the democratic movement between 1992 and 1994 were largely influenced by the attempt to make sure that Tembo would not replace Dr. Banda to become president of Malawi, as Banda was now too old and in bad health.

In fact, I suspect that even the Operation Bwezani in 1993 was conducted to deprive Tembo of any ammunition, political or otherwise, for MCP to fall. Have you ever, wondered what could have happened if MCP lost the 1994 elections and MCP still had MYP armed with military weapons?

I think whoever was behind the disarmament of MYP, did not want to take any chances even if it was less likely that MCP would use MYP. But no one could have underestimated MYP also knowing what they were able to do in the Mozambican Frelimo and Renamo war, under Tembo’s leadership.

However, when that dark veil is lifted and the ugly mask is peeled off, I see a very different John Tembo whom I admire the most of all our founding fathers. I hope that future generations will look back and judge Tembo differently from us. If we don’t honor his name, I see that future generations will still do it: I see a JZU Tembo International Airport, or JZU Tembo High Way or JZU Tembo Interchange, etc.

When you look at the political and economic history of our country and the accomplishments of the state between 1964 and 1994; building and managing an economy from the ground up; entrenching a political establishment and ensuring survival of the tender state; you see the signature of John Tembo, the master planner, great tactician, political manipulator, the shrewd deal maker and international policy negotiator, master of clandestine war operations beyond our borders, and the greatest public and corporate administrator in our history.

I am left amazed at how Tembo managed to pull off all these accomplishments across the sectors. Mostly, Tembo was holding these various positions and managing various mega projects in various corporate bodies, government ministries and the party. But he successfully accomplished them all with excellent results.

And for the 21st century, I see in Tembo the greatest leader of Opposition of them all, who contributed a lot to the successful government between 2004 and 2009.  

I am not here to praise Tembo, because I agree with William Shakespeare that, “the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” But Malawi needs a Heroes Acre.