AN APOLOGY (SORT OF)
Unlike the Inspector general of Police I am not too proud to apologise when I have made a mistake. So to Airtel and the Malawi Government spy department, I apologise if I got it wrong. Shortly after I posted the blog one reader, Seth Miller, whose comment appears below, gave me details of similar problems which Airtel sorted out for him. Everything is up and running again so perhaps a technical hitch.
SPYING ON YOUR OWN PEOPLE
I am not normally paranoid about security issues as regular readers of the blog may have already discerned. However, in light of the recent boast by one of our Ministers that the Government had invested in equipment to track and identify 'seditious' internet material from within Malawi, I hope that I will be forgiven for making the connect between a big "403 FORBIDDEN" and the installation of such equipment.
As for spying on your own people - which Hetherwick Ntaba, special bigmouth to the President admitted - I had my say in a short interview aired by Capital Radio last week - damning the practice.
Successive governments in Malawi - no exceptions - have spent more time and effort in spying on their own people who they suspect of being unsympathetic to the 'government of the day', in reality the President and the 'ruling' party, than on the identification of real threats to the nation from external and internal sources. I do, of course, admit the necessity of identifying credible threats to the incumbent president or key personnel.
What successive governments fail to appreciate is that it MUST be the GOVERNMENT OF THE DAY or the PRESIDENT OF THE DAY that become the subjects of criticism or adverse comment because they and not the opposition are the ones who make and implement the policies that we may not particulalrly agree with, especially like now when the economy is in tatters at the hands of a so-called Economic Engineer who is completely intolerant of any hint of criticism and is intent on robbing us of our hard-won rights.
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