POLY AND THE ART OF IMPUNITY. Part 1

By Daniel Sato - September 11, 2015

Slightly over a month ago, Poly was closed. Slightly less than 2 months of closure, the college is poised to open for its third semester of the calendar year on 5^th October. Quite a record. It’s only in Malawi where you can have three academic semesters in one calendar year.

Some cornestones we could embrace

But the closure is history now, and most students are looking forward to the opening, the future. So too are parents and guardians, lecturers and other stakeholders. It’s time that the students found lasting solutions to their problems. You know what sweet mortals, it is the students who have a problem because the administration has a problem.

So, plainly speaking, who then has a genuine problem? Your guess is not as bad as mine. Intelligent mortals, Poly has a problem and it is called impunity. The feeling that you can do anything and get away with it. The feeling of lack of responsibility and patriotism.

Truth be told, there are two warring factions at the Polytechnic, like Nyerere and Maule, eternal rivals. The students Union and the administration. But the good thing is that with the

Students in an earlier riot

Maule and Nyerere rivalry, that is a social undertaking, usually for fun. This is not the case with Poly, purely an academic institution where the highest calibre of human behavior is expected.

Fellow mortals, as school opens there are facts you have to accept and live with. Nobody these days fancies the idea of blocking the highway whenever there are disagreements within the blue wall. No matter what the disagreement, nobody apart from the ones perpetrating the demonstrations will be on your side. Fact number one.

Part of the Polytechnic

As if to add salt on the wound, those people who are inconvenienced are from the corporate world. Prospective scholarship givers, employers, sponsors and partners in various projects. This is 2015 and people are simply fed up.

Because of this rivalry, it can be established that the administration doesn’t want to work with the students union effectively (something smells fishy), in decisions that affect students. As long as there is no cooperation between these two, Poly will always be a rotten fish.

Many people will argue that whether demonstrations or not, people will still graduate.

That brings us to fact number two. It must also be established that it is not just about graduating, a degree is just a certificate, but there is more to it.

As we graduate without solving the problems that are strangling Poly right now, when we are in the corporate world, do we seriously think we will solve the bigger problems in the water boards, Escom, MBC, Hospitals and fight corruption currently making our currency the worst performing in the world? A definite no.

There were adverts before school opened in the newspapers that they were looking for people to supply curtains, maintain the MLT, Toilets, the hostels, pavements and floodlights around the hostels. All that will soon go down the drain...

In my next posting, I will discuss why major maintenance has failed to take place over the last years and why it is always the administration block being painted, why students are treated like pieces of trash and many more.