There is a time to sing, a time to dance and lo, a time to ponder over the deep meaning of words. The word malfeasance has made a grand entry into recent media discourse so join me to muse over, yea – chew the word as we dig deep into its meaning. Be ready for giant goose pimples and a skin crawl. On the surface, malfeasance sounds like an innocent beautiful word; it even sounds musical and has both a buzz and a hum to it. But …….
Malfeasance is a two-part word – both bad. ‘Mal’ simply means bad; like in maladministration (administration that has gone bad) while ‘feasance’ has an eerie similarity with a word in the liquid waste family. In effect, malfeasance is like a pile of cow dung, like manure that has been rained on! Nasty! Malfeasance is so bad that it takes away the incense from what should have otherwise been a good situation.
I checked the Oxford Dictionary for words in the general neighbourhood of malfeasance by alphabetical listing. Here are some of the neighbouring words: Malcontent (a disconnected person; a rebel). Malediction (a curse). Malefactor (a criminal; a person who does evil). Malevolent (wishing evil to others). Malfeasance (doing evil to others). Malformation (faulty formation).
Malfunction (a failure to function in a normal or satisfactory manner). Malice (the intention to do evil; a desire to tease, especially cruelly). Malign (injurious; speak ill of; slander. From Latin – ‘malignus’). Malignant (harmful; feeling or showing intense ill will; of a disease – infectious; of a tumour tending to invade normal tissue and return after removal; cancerous).
So malfeasance is in bad company indeed. It is overwhelmed by bad siblings, bad cousins, bad uncles, bad aunties, bad children, and definitely bad parents and grandparents – and sumptuously feeds off on sycophancy, greed and impudence.
From media reports, it appears that we have developed a certain insatiable appetite for malfeasance. Listening and reading media content give the impression that Ghana is having a grand malfeasance party. The party is attended by politicians, public and civil servants, the police and customs officers; and boldly gate-crashed by my brethrens in the mass media.
Bribery, gifts and corruption are the alcohol of choice offered at the malfeasance party. These are drank nyafu-nyafu, with reckless abandon, turning public service into self service. Someday, the privileged elite would wake up to realize that the rank and file of this country completely mistrust them.
Malfeasance is in high, low and middle places, with people outdoing one another. These people belong to the aristocracy class. They are hunters and gatherers, not farmers. They sniff for spoil; they plunder and loot where they have not sewn. And they do so with a sense of entitlement and impudence and with an annoying swagger as if Ghana belongs to them.
The stench of malfeasance is smelt when things begin to unravel, a thread at a time. But whenever, like in recent M&J, Muntaka, Sekyi-Hughes and Ghana@50 news cycles, several threads unravel suddenly, the nostrils of an entire nation become blocked. Malfeasance is more noticeable when power is lost. During power-packed periods, signs of malfeasance appear to be normal, with an assumed birth-right to chop-chop while the population worships the perpetrators.
People from fabulously deprived backgrounds, who suddenly find themselves in malfeasance opportunities, lose their minds. But when the opportunity seat is pulled off, their excesses are acknowledged as filthy, followed by groundswell disgrace.
Malfeasance is both seductive and addictive. Like alcoholism, it typically begins small – a little taste of the stuff, followed by enjoyment, until the person is caught firmly and deeply in the grips of malfeasance. Politicians, public officials, civil servants, police and customs officers and media practitioners literally carry the sign, “We’re open for business. Bring it on!”
Those who engage in acts of malfeasance, could they be described as “Malfeasance Practitioners” just as professionals like lawyers and doctors are known as legal and medical practitioners? This naming could remove malfeasance from the shady gooey realm into where it belongs – in the open, to be confronted squarely by its arch triple enemies – Transparency, Probity and Accountability (TPA).
As a people, we appear to have become stuck on relationships that are predicated firmly on cedi and gravy. Relatives, friends, relatives of friends, and friends of relatives pile up pressure, demanding favours, which tend to add ugliness to malfeasance.
From our meagre public purse, our leaders have access to our money (which they take and take). Then for decorative good effect, we also give them (or they take) gravy. Gravy comprises of privileges and opportunities with which our elected and appointed leaders clothe themselves and their cronies. We, the citizenry, spoil them and even address some of them by undeserved titles like Honourable.
Invariably, this results in the privatization of what belongs to all by/for a few privileged folks. Clearly, public officials from the time of independence to the 4th Republican era of NPP and NDC1&2 all suffer from the malfeasance disease, which have led (lead?) them to plunder both tangible and intangible things which belong to all the people. Crude oil will breed sophisticated multicoloured illegitimate children of malfeasance.
As you continue to ponder over malfeasance, keep the following images in mind as a backdrop. Five percent of Ghanaians go to bed hungry – on empty stomachs. These are our town folks who live on air diet, water diet, and indeed, no diet at all. These are our village and city folks who are male/female, young/old, children/adults, tall/short, girls/boys who float in poverty and swim in hunger.
These are the children who go to school under trees and pretend to study under the guidance of teachers who are hardly literate or who have over time, lost their literacy because after all, literacy belongs to the ‘use it or lose it’ family of skills. These are the real victims of malfeasance – the quintessential road-kills.
A legitimate question that arises from pondering over these victims of malfeasance is: Do our leaders – politicians, civil/public servants and all the many practitioners of malfeasance who have easy and unlimited access to the public purse and opportunities hate Ghana? Do they love themselves so much that the self-love translates into hatred for this country?
Here is an Aesop fable. Much like Kweku Ananse stories, Aesop fables use animals as the main characters in the stories. Aesop was an ex-slave who was freed from slavery because of his wit in telling simple and intelligent stories to drive home important points. Here is one of such tales, titled, “The Lion, the Mouse and the Fox.”
A lion, fatigued by the heat of the sunshine, fell asleep in his den. A mouse ran over his mane and ears and woke him from his slumber. He rose up and shook himself in great wrath and searched every corner of his den to find the mouse. A fox saw him and asked, “Oh, so a fine lion like you is frightened of a mouse?” The lion responded, “It’s not the mouse I fear. I resent his familiarity and ill breeding.”
Is malfeasance a child of ill breeding?
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