Today, Tuesday 19th May 2015, Raphael Tenthani
was supposed to be landing at the Sir Seretse Khama International Airport, here
in Gaborone, Botswana. He was coming to attend a stakeholders meeting of the African
Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), which is going to run from tomorrow 20th
to 21st May at the Gaborone Sun Hotel. I was going to welcome Ralph
at the airport, and he was going to bring me the latest Malawian newspapers and
the current issue of my favourite Malawian magazine, The Lamp.
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| Tenthani interviewing John Tembo. Pic: Tenthani's Facebook Page |
He is not coming. He was laid to rest yesterday, and is now peacefully resting in the bosom of Bwanje Valley in Ntcheu. That expansive valley is also my ancestral home, something I shared with him. My last whatsapp message to him was on Saturday 16th May, at 19:32hrs. I was asking him to confirm his itinerary and to assure me everything was in place for his coming. The single grey tick in my whatsapp means he never saw the message. Will never see it. He had probably just started off from his village at that moment, returning to Blantyre. And unbeknownst to himself, nor to us all, he was just a little more than an hour away from the catastrophe that would end his illustrious and extraordinary life, at around 9pm on Saturday.
It was all a malevolent type of de javu from an earlier
false alarm. I remember calling Ralph’s younger brother Kizito in December 2011
when a car accident he had had then led to rumours that he had died. Kizito
reassured me that he was not dead, but he was badly injured. On Saturday night
16th May 2015, there was no reassurance from Kizito. It was not even
a rumour. The Malawian social media machine went into overdrive, and eye witnesses
were confirming the dreadful news on Facebook, email forums and whatsapp, in
real time.
Ralph and I became friends in our late teens. Some six
months older than him, I finished school earlier and went on to Lilongwe Teachers’
College to attend a teacher training programme, then called MASTEP – Malawi
Special Teacher Education Programme. We taught during the year, and went to
college during the holidays. One month-end afternoon in 1990 or thereabouts I
arrived at Ntcheu Boma to collect my salary. Ralph heard the news and sent word
through our mutual friend Albert Kalimbakatha, the poet. I should not return to
Chikande without visiting him, said the message. Visit him I did, and found
that he had pleasantly arranged an impromptu meeting of the Ntcheu Secondary
School Writers’ Workshop. There were quite a few eager students at that meeting.
Barely a year out of secondary school myself (I went to
Nankhunda Seminary and later Police Secondary School, both in Zomba), I had
managed to get myself published in a number of newspapers, and broadcast on
radio. I had won an honorable mention in a Florida State University (USA) short ‘short
story’ writing competition. A newly-launched Malawian literary magazine, WASI,
had published the story. Ralph wanted me to talk about my writing, how I got
started, what I was working on, what good writing looked like, and so on. We
had a lively discussion that went on late into the night.
At that time Ralph himself had already completed a draft of
a novel. His English teacher, a VSO volunteer, had it nicely typed and
photocopied. Ralph gave me a copy which I took home and read. You could not
believe it had been written by someone still in their teens. The English was
not only superb, it was impeccable. He had an incredible talent for painting a
scene you thought you were seeing live action. He was hoping to get it
published in the then Macmillan Pacesetter series. It was what every one of us
was reading at the time.
Our interests went beyond the literary. We both loved
listening to music charts on the BBC World Service. We never missed The Vintage Chart show, John Peel, and such
other programmes. In 1993 the BBC World Service ran a contest and was awarding
new releases as prizes. I won a new release of Paul McCartney’s album, Off the Wall. CDs were just coming into
fashion, but I only owned the good old cassette player. I opted for a cassette
tape.
My name was announced as one of five winners, with other
winners coming from such far-away places as Malaysia, Argentina and Israel, I
think. In Malawi the programme came on very late into the night. Everyone in my
village in Mayera was asleep. I doubted there was a soul on the planet who knew
me, who heard my name announced. Well, Ralph did. He astounded me with
congratulations the next time we met. This was way before mobile phones or
email.
It was no surprise then that after Ntcheu Secondary School,
he did not struggle to find a job with a newspaper. As Peter Jegwa has movingly
described the
man and the era, Malawi was beginning to undergo transformative political change.
The Catholic Bishops released their epochal pastoral letter on 8th
March 1992, and Chakufwa Chihana made his triumphant return to Malawi. He would
get arrested just after disembarking from the plane at Kamuzu International
Airport on 6th April 1992. Ralph sharpened his pen on the politics
of the time and became a first rate journalist in addition to being a first
rate creative writer. In 1994 we formed the Malawi Writers Union, and Ralph was
a founding member. I was founding treasurer, and later became president after
Edison Mpina’s (RIP) sudden resignation in 1996.
In 1995 my children’s book Fleeing the War won first prize in the British-Malawi Partnership
Scheme, locally known as the British Council Write a Story competition. It was launched in 1996. Both at the
prize-giving ceremony and the book launch, Ralph was present and covered the
events. When I gave my acceptance speech, I alluded to something about freedom
of expression that was not there during the one-party era. When that statement
appeared in The Nation newspaper, I became
very apprehensive. The Malawi Congress Party was no longer in power, but the
less courageous among us were still cagey with what we said about the regime. I
called Ralph and told him I was uncomfortable with how the statement had come
out. I asked if The Nation could
issue a correction. They did.
In later years, I came to regret my fear and to admire
Ralph’s courage. While my journalistic escapades were limited to the sports
page in The Daily Times and the book
review page in The Nation, Ralph was
on the front page. When the late Poulton Mtenje called and invited me to meet
him at Blantyre Newspapers Limited one evening, Ralph told me I was probably
being offered a newsroom job. The intensity of the politics was too strong for
me and I decided I was happier editing primary school textbooks at the Malawi
Institute of Education, and writing fiction, poetry and plays. And contributing
to the sports and literary pages.
Ralph’s decision to quit the newsroom and stand on his own
did not come easy. Having been transferred back and forth between Blantyre and
Lilongwe, he was reluctant to be transferred yet again. He toyed with the idea
of quitting a full time newsroom job and becoming a stringer. I thought he was
crazy. True to his character of making bold decisions and not looking back, he
took the plunge. He soared to even greater heights, as he was now a
correspondent for the BBC, The Associated Press and the Pan-African News Agency. He took on lots
of big projects with global media icons such as Brian Williams and Lawrence O'Donnell. And he travelled the world. It became his classroom.
Back on home soil, he ruffled feathers. Political partisans
hated him when their parties and their leadership found themselves thoroughly
muckraked. He was muckraking even before he launched his famous Sunday Times column Muckraking on Sunday. Aside from his much publicised arrest on 15th
March 2005, together with Mabvuto Banda, there were other run-ins with the
authorities that he chose not to talk about, expect to his closest friends.
Some months after that arrest in March 2005, Ralph got a call from the New
State House in Lilongwe. The erstwhile president, Dr. Bingu wa Mutharika,
wanted to see him.
The earlier arrest had come and gone and the issue had been
buried. Why did Bingu want to see Ralph again? He alerted a few close friends
and asked us not to publicise the issue. He boarded a coach and arrived in
Lilongwe. He was driven to State House, and was taken to a waiting room. Unsure
what was going to happen to him, we had come up with a plan should there be the
slightest indication that some trouble had befallen him. We had gathered direct
contacts of individuals and organisations, both at home and abroad, who would
be informed instantly.
Thanks to mobile phone technology, Ralph was able to update
us every few moments. He was anxious, but he was not daunted. He waited for
hours, as we monitored from our computer screens. The afternoon went and
evening came. He was finally told that Bingu was too busy for that day, he would
see him another day. We breathed a huge sigh of relief.
But the irony of it all was not lost on us. On several
occasions I argued and disagreed with Ralph on what I thought was an imperative
for African thinkers to defend African leaders from unfair criticism,
particularly from the West. Often, the African leaders themselves undermine
this very imperative by attacking their own citizens who disagree with them,
leaving them no option but to seek protection from the very West itself. Years
later, I began to see things from Ralph’s perspective. Although it mattered
what the West said about African leaders, criticism from African citizens was
meant to spur change in Africa. It was well meaning, and did not depend on what
Westerners thought to legitimise it.
Later Ralph’s relationship with Bingu warmed up remarkably,
but it did not cloud his judgment. Bingu would call Ralph once in a while to
chat with him about his column. One year Bingu invited Ralph to join him on a
trip to France. That still did not affect his judgment, leading Bingu to
comment one day that the Sunday Times
had a column specifically aimed at him.
The last two years of Bingu’s rule were filled with
political tensions across the country. People deemed critics of his presidency
were receiving threats. There were mysterious fires, some targeting markets,
others targeting houses and offices. The then University of Malawi Polytechnic final year student Robert Chasowa was murdered. Ralph’s house was broken into and some
effects were stolen. He did not think it was politically motivated, and did not
want to discuss the matter further. That was enough to have silenced an
ordinary critic, but Ralph did not see himself as a critic for criticism’s sake.
He was a patriot. His love was for Malawi first. Everything else came second.
There is a coincidence worth noting that played itself out
in Ralph’s last days. Exactly ten years to the day of his arrest on 15th
March 2005, Ralph got an anonymous phone call. This was on 15th
March this year. “You are stretching freedom of expression too far,” he was
told. He did not recognise the voice. And he did not want this shared with
anyone. The introvert that he was, as Peter Jegwa has described him, he never
wanted to draw attention to himself. But it did not deter him from still adding
a joke. “If you hear I’m writing graffiti on some prison wall like the other
guy, don’t be too surprised! Hah! Hah!” he messaged me on whatsapp. I told him
I would send a tweet, but I would not mention names. He was fine with that. He
hoped the issue would die on its own. Apparently, it did.
When Nyasatimes
approached a group of us in December 2014 and asked us to nominate Person of the Year for 2014, and to
explain why, this is what I wrote about Ralph:
For speaking truth to power. Tenthani is widely
recognised as the most important Malawian journalist and columnist writing
today. He is a walking barometer of the Malawian political mood. He analyses
Malawi’s political leadership with an even-handedness that is as clear as it is
penetrating. He is very cool headed, which makes his writing uniquely persuasive.
He accepts and appreciates criticism and responds in a calm-headed way, never
losing his temper or looking down upon his detractors. He is a walking encyclopaedia
of contemporary Malawian political history, remembering facts that are easily
forgotten by the public but that have a poignant relevance to day to day life
in Malawi’s politics. Presidents have come and presidents have gone, but his
talented pen and keen eye for piercing language have always provided
level-headed reflections and analyses that speak for millions of Malawians.
His journalism made Ralph a global Malawian, and his death
has reverberated around the world. As of a few hours ago Google was returning
50,800 hits on his name, and still growing. There are articles announcing his
death in different parts of the world, in languages too many to count. I had
hoped to see him again today and for the next two days, but pictures of his stately
casket, and of the brown freshly dug earth, tell a different story. A story of
a genius resting blissfully in the depths of Bwanje Valley.
