Carlsberg first built its beer plant outside Denmark right here in Malawi. That was back in 1968. Just four years after independence. How ironic!

This is a piece of history many of us beer guzzlers in the country are quite proud of. Carlsberg Green remains a classic, unmatched in its legacy. Perhaps only Carlsberg Special rivals it, but that’s a debate for another day. Yet as we raise our bottles, ice cold or straight from counter (after all this is June and where is the electricity to keep the fridge running), the revolutionary scholar Walter Rodney asks us to pause; and reflect.

Rodney, in one of his Decolonial Marxism essays, ponders: “Building a beer factory is considered as the first step towards industrialisation. Quite apart from the fact that I don’t know of beer as having developed any nation, one has to realise the fallacy on which the claims are based. The underlying notion is that industrialisation per se is the answer to underdevelopment. Therefore, the logic of that argument is that if the country ceases to import beer and instead develops an import substitute by making the beer locally, then a step has been made in the direction of development.”

Rodney’s insight forces us to reconsider the meaning of development and to interrogate the legacy of European influence in post-independence Africa. For those who assume Denmark had no role in colonisation or neocolonialism on the continent, Rodney helps illuminate how imperialist relations were not always direct but were certainly deliberate (with both solid and dotted lines). The imperialists and (neo) colonizers are well captured by this idiom: A kwawo/pawo ndi mizu ya Kachere!

Europe and (let me refrain from naming a particular imperial country I am visiting for a conference this summer, especially after seeing what they’ve done to this other pan-Africanist and anti-imperial politician also known as Juju) worked collectively to obstruct the full realisation of African sovereigns, and most importantly, industrial and human development. The fact remains, neocolonialism is as violent today as slavery and colonialism was, yes! This explains why even today we are told not to sing our songs of freedom by countries that vote for racist and rapists into power in order to retain their imperial stance. This is why the imperial disregard our judiciary (such as the Supreme Courts) as long as such rulings question their imperial quo. Need I say more?

For Juju, Evison Matafale’s Kuimba 1 reminds us that freedom is not always welcomed by those who benefit from our silence. But we will continue to sing our songs of freedom even if it is in whispers.

Back to  Carlsberg Green! So why did Kamuzu allow Carlsberg to build that plant? The plant signifies the formal announcement of the neo-colonial project. With Kamuzu Banda spearheading it. For him, independence did not mean the transformation of Malawi. It meant a continuation of imperial control. That is why he never wanted “Mitu bi” at his Eton College inspired academy. Here, Rodney evokes Amílcar Cabral, who argues that:

“Independence is not just a simple matter of expelling the [white settlers], of having a flag and a national anthem.”

In the same vein, Matafale sings: “Malawi, ufulu si nsima ai” while declaring that his fire is for “freedom for everyone, everywhere” in Kuimba 1 and its sequel, Kuimba 2, respectively.

Does this explains why Kamuzu ensured, just as Rodney notes of agriculture in slavery and colonial days that “it never evolved beyond backward agriculture, so industrialisation was out of the question” for the ordinary people, the proletariat. The Chuma chili mu nthaka was never aimed at transforming the country into an an innovative or industrial arena but continued subjugation of the ordinary folks just like those who masterminded the bloodbath in Nkhatabay had before Kamuzu.

Next month, Malawi turns 61. While our rare earths power electric vehicles in the United Kingdom and Canada and Our uranium powers nuclear submarines and power plants in the UK, France, and Australia, many of us here at home go without electricity for more than six hours a day.

In few days time, we must ask ourselves as we have openly been doing the past 30 years: Is this, what we are living, Independence?