Malawi could be losing about $15 billion in revenue every year due to dubious mining operations by exporters of precious stones. According to a report from the Malawi Miners Task Force (MTF), shipments of gemstones, especially Nyala ruby of exceptional quality, are regularly being illegally  exported and smuggled out of the country. More here via Nyasa Times

So, while you work hard and wonder what is happening to your beloved country, there’s wholesale plunder of it’s resources by the very same people who you considered the usual suspects.

And if you look around your new / adopted surrounding, you see your country’s citizens ( be it in the US, in Britain or in South Africa) toiling, suffering, discriminated against left right and centre, as the societies they live in sugar coat their suffering, and generally use the media to ensure their suffering is invisible, I see Malawians being real victims of the system almost everyday, victims of abuse, working in terrible underpaid jobs, being on the receiving end of verbal abuse, mistreament by employers, or work colleagues, victims of extortion by public bodies… while back home in Malawi – a country from which they left in pursuit of better pastures, an unholy alliance of unhinged businessmen (driven by greed and aided by spineless clueless ignorant politicians – the same politicians the West continue to support), the Chinese (who were said to have recently sent 40 tonnes of rare earth mineral niobium to China as a “bulk sample”), and international organisations advocating free market policies, plunder the country’s wealth…oh, great, that’s just great.

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