Only you have the right to decide the course which your life should take. Nobody else, and nothing else should take that right away from you. You may have excuses to claim that your Faith / Religion absolves you of that prerogative, but I doubt any such excuses will take you that far. I also doubt they will improve your life. From my observations, especially of ‘church communities’ in the UK and Malawi, the chances are such excuses will benefit others, an elite few, more than it does you. Just ask anyone with a half a brain what the average income disparities between the ‘shepherds’ and the ‘sheep’ in pentecostal mega churches look like.

Yesterday I had a chat with a friend who has just encountered an emotional manipulator at his workplace in the form of his line manager. It’s come at a time when he’s going through a lot of difficult things in his private life. And although extremely upset, he’s decided not to ignore it, but go through the agonising complaint procedure at his workplace, with the boss of the manager suggesting that they resolve it internally. But my friend has had just about enough of the BS from the sly weasel and is not about to let the manager go unscathed, especially since there have been at least 16 separate incidents which demonstrate the manager’s manipulative and discriminatory behaviour. So, after being given a new line manager, he rang his union representative and they have scheduled a meeting with his bosses in which his grievances will be outlined, in the presence of a union representative. Lucky for him, he even printed emails and recorded conversations.

Now, I’ve encountered emotional manipulators in the past, even lived with one, so I appreciate how exhausting, degrading, difficult and gut-wrenching such experiences can be.

For  those not too familiar with what an emotional manipulator is, the following links could be helpful:

• Emotional Manipulation: What it is and how to deal with it
• Eight Easy Ways to Spot an Emotional Manipulator
• Covert Emotional Manipulation Tactics
• Letting Go of An Emotional Manipulator

But how does all this relate to Malawi?

Well, it is possible (and I’ve heard accusations pertaining to what I’m about to write) that some of the bad decisions African leaders continue to make, year in year out, stem from manipulation.

Apparently, there are people who have the president’s ear, who manipulate him/ her into making bad or not entirely helpful decisions. Not only  the president, some manipulate ministers, officials and others in positions of power. The culprits, it is said, are rogue public officials, predatory and wealthy business owners, religious leaders, foreign corporations and officials from international lending institutions, who it is alleged, are interested in keeping African countries in a perpetual state of dependency, poverty and helplessness – a state that enables the manipulators –  and their financial backers- to make huge profits from Africa, at the expense of Africans.

On a metaphysical level, and more importantly – at least for me, healthy and functional families are what has a real chance to rectify the problems in Malawi and across Africa. If these families, or rather relationships are disproportionately plagued by dysfunctions such as have been stated in the links above, it will be harder in my view, for African societies as a whole to be functional, and in turn more difficult to effect any meaninful form of economic development.