When he presided over the first congregation, president Bingu wa Mutharika told the 2008 University of Malawi graduating students that the day marked a point in their lives when they exited a world where people sympathised with them and entered one in which, as he put it, dog eats dog.
The president might not have been as explicit in his speech. However, whatever he said was understood to emphasise the importance of hard work.
That they were alighting from the University corridors wielding diplomas and degrees did not mean that the graduating students were there, so said the president. But it was their ability to stand the harsh and competitive world they were entering that would make everyone appreciate them.
From the president’s speech, one could easily see that hard work – nothing else – was the ladder to success.
Unfortunately, almost a year – or slightly more than a year – after his insightful speech, especially to those that revere hard work, the president is a manifestation of that which is but the opposite of hard work.
After rumours that he was the architect of a bid to bring back the quota system of selecting students to institutions of higher learning – in the name of equitable access to tertiary education – the president has come out clearly supporting the system that was outlawed in 1993.
The president told a press conference that he was absolutely in support of the system, stressing that he wanted to change the system which benefited one region, namely the northern region.
He added that through quota system, people from across the country would enjoy equal opportunities when it comes to accessing tertiary education. To defend this, the president singled out Mzuzu University which he said benefits the minority, namely people of the northern region.
The president statistically backed his reasoning. He said the northern region, with just 12 percent of the country’s population, enjoys 38 percent of those selected to the University while the central and southern regions – with significantly higher percentages of the country’s population – shared the remaining 62 percent of those selected to the institution.
Off the allocation of bed space in public institutions of higher learning, the president singled out the civil service as an entity that manifested bias towards, again, the northern region. Statistics were also at play here.
The president – confirming reports that he decided to vouch quota system after he established that the civil service was dominated by people from the northern and central regions – said Chitipa and Karonga combined has up to 225 in the government super scale grade while Chikwawa has only 55 yet the population of the two districts combined was not “even half of Chikwawa.”
By quickly changing colour like he has done, the president is presenting a paradox of himself.
Firstly, by bringing in quota system the president is discouraging hard work. Yet he is the one who has all along preached the gospel of hard work. The system, as authorities put it, will give each district 10 automatic places. Consequently, those who have cherished hard work all along will develop feeling that they should not work hard anyway because even if they do only 10 people and slightly more will fill the places.
As quota system would be awarding those who don’t even work hard, the spirit of laxity would go on and on and affect the civil service and government’s operations.
Hard work is what we have all believed in; and I humbly opine that the president should have considered where those who sat Mzuni entrance examinations came from before he could start blaming the distribution of the institution’s students based on their place of origin.
Does the president want to convince the nation that that 38 percent was favoured to get there? How much do we know that it is not through hard work that the 38 percent went to Mzuzu University? If he had the numbers of those who sat the entrance examinations, wouldn’t the president have had better ground to analyse the situation and establish why people from the other regions failed to get higher percentages? Did the president establish how much the mentality that Mzuzu is not a ‘city’ held by many contribute to the inconsistent figures?
Again, did the president find out why only 55 people from Chikwawa made it into the government super scale? Are they the only educated people in Chikwawa? It would have been fair to find out where other educated people from Chikwawa are because, honestly, the 55 are not the only ones.
It would also have been fundamental if we looked at the available alternatives for educated people from Chikwawa and those from Karonga and Chitipa. It might happen that people from the former have alternatives hence shun the civil service which is generally blamed for low salaries, while those from the latter don’t have such alternatives.
The president could have enough ammunition to start agitating for a change if he had established that the status quo was a result of dubious acts and not hard work. He would not have been blamed if he agitated for this change after establishing that the status quo led to inefficiencies in the civil service.
Secondly, the president is sowing seeds of disunity by propagating quota. Yet it is the president himself who has been in the forefront singing Tiyende pamodzi ndi mtima umodzi.
By consistently singling out the northern region in his bid to advance quota system, the president is seen to be against people – either apparently or really – from the region. Who knows, with intermarriages one would sound northerner when they are southerner or vice versa. So, who would the president be fighting?
Through such references the president is seen to be attempting to marginalise people from the north. Quota system is like telling one’s ten children that he or she knows that not all of them want to eat but they should share the little food. The question ‘how will those that hunger most feel about such a parent?’ begs.
As father of the nation, the president should be the last person to divide his children. This conclusion begs specifically when one looks at the uniform pattern with which the president and his party won the May 19 polls. Why should such a unified nation be divided because of a poor policy on education?
To say the least, quota system is not a solution to what authorities see as disproportionate distribution of tertiary education in the country. It is but paradoxical and malicious. It is going to discriminate against those who work hard and favour those who don’t.
Even Minister of Education George Chaponda has – most definitely – alluded to the fact that quota system is not the solution. In many public attempts to defend reintroduction of quota on radio, Chaponda has used the gap between those who qualify for tertiary education and those who go there as reason for the change.
For instance, Chaponda said on state-run MBC that last year, 5,000 qualified for entry into the University of Malawi but only 1,000 went there. By presenting the figure, Chaponda attempted to defend quota system as a solution to the problem. However, he exposed government’s lack of strategy when it comes to catering for those who qualify for University. Further, he exposed government’s lack of ground for reintroducing quota.
Government should stop advancing quota as a solution to the problem that sees few of those that qualify for it going for university education. Instead, authorities should find means of accommodating those that do not go to university despite qualifying. I stand to be corrected if need be, but creating more bed space is the only solution.
Otherwise, we are putting at stake the quality of our education in that through quota system, we will give the cap to those whom it does not fit – namely, those who do not deserve university education because they don’t work hard. Again, the peace with which we have been cherished is being staked. And, the president will be the first to be blamed for he is seen to be advancing issues that could lead to all this.
