I was privileged to attend the memorial service of Susan Sanson, wife to Dr. Billy Sanson, the Chancellor College chaplain, which the Baptist church conducted in the Great Hall in Zomba in 2015.
Many moving tributes to the departed “mother” were poured out by various speakers on that solemn afternoon. It was clear that Susan had lived her life well, and had left a great legacy in terms of practical Christian living: sharing all that she could with as great a number of people as possible.
One speaker showed some of the memorabilia she had been given by Susan as she interacted with her. To her surprise, she hastened to add, she discovered that a colleague of hers had her own collection of items she had received from Susan.
Another speaker said Susan had been a mother to all, and had always given the students practical advice on how to live. One of the things she had said, continued the speaker, was that she had great confidence in the students as people who would one day change Malawi.
We badly need people that will change the destiny of our country. Susan saw such people in the students of Chancellor College. If Malawi remains on her current course, she will end up at destination X but if the people that Susan had in mind get their act together, it is possible, indeed desirable, that Malawi will change her course and end up at an altogether better destination.
What does it take to be destiny changers? I would suggest that, as we search within ourselves, we adopt the four D’s as suggested by Giovanni Maninni: Desire, Determination, Dedication and Discipline.
Anybody who has achieved anything in life started off with desire. It must start from within you before anything can happen in the external world. You can never be slave driven to success. It must be part of you. The body has an amazing tendency to reject anything that does not belong to it. That is what white blood cells do: they vehemently fight anything that does not belong to the body. Ideas too need to belong to a person or risk being fought off. So whatever it is that you will achieve must first of all belong to you: you need to hatch the idea, nourish it, nurse it then implement it. In short you must have the desire to get things done.
Desire can only be sustained by determination. Determination is that strong will to keep going regardless of the obstacles you come across. Without determination, any desire will wilt and die. There is not a single person who has achieved great things without meeting obstacles. To keep going in the face of obstacles, never giving up, is what constitutes determination.
With desire and determination, you need dedication. By dedication is meant having total commitment to the program you are pursuing. Jesus Christ put it this way: “Nobody who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God”. When you are dedicated you do not look back or waver. If the young people of Malawi want to be destiny changers they must be dedicated to the cause they pursue.
What compliments these three values is discipline. Discipline, dear reader, is critical to success. Put simply, discipline is doing things that you do not necessarily like to do but which are critical success factors for whatever it is you are pursuing. Conversely, it is also refraining from doing things that may be attractive but are ruinous to progress. It takes discipline to keep away from such.
In our democratic Malawi, many people fail on this score. To observe a strict code of discipline is perceived as being deprived of one’s freedom. If the situation in the civil service is anything to go by, we have a long way to go. In the civil service it is not uncommon for people engage in “special work” during the day and claim night allowances. Even doing work that they are supposed to do anyway attracts huge allowances. In the private sector an accountant will prepare budgets, put together financial statements, do bank reconciliation, among others, as part of his/her normal duties. In the civil service they will insist that it should be done at Mponela or somewhere out of town so that they can claim allowances. If you think such people will be destiny changers, forget it.
The recently leaked Reforms document shows that a lot needs to be done if we should expect destiny changers in our public service. I would be quick to add that our private sector is scarcely better.