“Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim Gun, and they have not”

-Hilaire Belloc

Hailaire Belloc uttered the quote above to emphasize the military superiority that white colonial forces had over their unsuspecting victims here in Africa at the onset of colonization.

Hold on a minute: this post isn’t about colonialism nor the “evil whites” and all that “path-dependency” blame game that is associated with colonialism and its effects in former colonies. Rather, this entry is about strategy – outsmarting your competitors by capitalizing on their weaknesses.

When it comes to attracting tourists, Malawi plays a zero-sum game with its neighboring countries and, at the moment, statistics indicate that Malawi is lagging behind, hence the need for a proper strategy to overturn tables or –worse – drive towards a semblance of parity. To fulfil this cause, Mr. Bitchless thinks that a careful study of our neighboring countries’ capabilities and shortcomings is a paramount starting point. Like a poor bachelor that competes with his relatively affluent neighbors to land pussycats, Malawi needs to identify its neighbors’ weaknesses and capitalize on them swiftly.

A married friend once said that it is not Lake Malawi that makes Malawi unique among its neighbors. Neither is it the few game that we stock in our national parks and game reserves. Nor Mulanje Mt. Not even our banal cultural relics. Rather, he argued that, in terms of these, our neighboring countries have better to offer than we do – hence they always pull more tourists than us. Calling for a strategic change, he prophesized that, so long Malawi continues to use physical features, game, and culture, as bait for attracting tourists, its tourism sector will remain rooted in the doldrums.

Convinced by his married friend’s analysis, Mr. Bitchless now believes that Malawi needs to adopt a “whatever happens, we have got the ganja, and they have not” strategy. Talking about strategy, Europeans capitalized on the Maxim gun and it worked. Similarly, Malawi can capitalize on its abundant reserves of ganja.

 After all, scores of tourists that have visited the SADC region have attested that Malawi has the best ganja strain in the region. While Mt Mulanje cannot match the mighty Kilimanjaro, for example, it is an established fact that Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe cannot match Malawi’s ganja endowment – both quality and quantity wise. Therefore, as a nation, we need to look at ganja as the engine that can propel our country’s stunted tourism sector from rags to bitches.

Pause. Mr. Bitchless feels the need to clarify one point here. A large section of religious Malawians, specifically Christians, call for continual prohibition of ganja for they believe that consuming ganja is a sin. This is ridiculous. As it has been mentioned over and over on issues of legislation, this country is not a THEOCRACY! Certainly, we cannot allow Christians to use their numbers to bully religious minorities. If you are convinced that some cosmic being loses his mind whenever a person lights up a tightly rolled blunt, don’t smoke. After all, you are the one who is convinced, not everybody else. What is Mr. Bitchless saying? Religion is an individual issue. Do not be that jerk that demands others to alter their ways of living to suit his religious convictions. By the way, Mr. Preacher man, as a self-declared bible expert, would you mind showing a biblical passage that explicitly prohibits the growing and use of cannabis? This is the 21st century. It is diabolical to sustain laws that simply serve to deny other citizens to partake in benign activities simply because some certain influential twat does not approve of such activities.

 Let us carry on. Malawi should legalize it, and by becoming the first country to legalize in the region, Malawi would enhance its appeal to tourists. Legalization would turn Malawi into an international weed haven. Like Eric Aniva, legalization would definitely put the country on the world map. Through spiraling tourism, legalization would act as an ideal precursor that would transition our economy from relying on a dwindling tobacco industry to diversity. We have sang this song for a long time and it is about time we started taking some preliminary action.

Mr. Bitchless is convinced that the process of diversifying Malawi’s economy should start with legalizing the production and consumption of weed. As mentioned already, this would trigger an unprecedented flow of tourists. After all, if you think about it, most tourists visit this part of the world for pot anyways. Ask yourself this question, have you ever encountered a tourists who’s not a pothead? As such, if Malawi were to legalize, tourist junkies would be flocking in large numbers to our country. Win-win.

An influx of tourists would translate to a steady flow of forex – likely, more than we currently earn from tobacco. In addition to attracting tourists, legalization would also mean lots of stoned people on the streets, which would mean a large demand for junk food. Guess who would benefit from this? Not just junk food, weed is also known to make people generous on the market. When stoned, people usually buy for the sake of buying. This way, small and medium enterprises would benefit greatly here. In short, legalization would give birth to lots of businesses hence more employment opportunities for the locals.

Of course, for all these benefits to materialize, institutional discipline and tactical maneuvering would have to be undertaken. For example, porous borders would need to be sealed. Updated production methods would have to be disseminated to all Bush Doctors. Major entry points of the country would have to be refurbished. Here, Mr. Bitchless is talking about Kamuzu International Airport and Chileka. An effective system of taxing the economy would need to be developed and fully enacted…..blah blah. You get the point?

Once this regimen is followed, Malawi will become the second most developed country in Sub-Sahara Africa.