The sacred midnight dance or M’mbwiza is
an entertaining lambada-like dance in which pairs sway to the thud pattern of the
African drum and the soothingly romantic lilt of the accordion. Politicians use
it to woo voters at political meetings; civic groups add it on their agenda to
entertain their audience so messages on safe abortion, HIV and AIDS, et cetera,
sink for action. But that is the ordinary M’mbwiza dance, M’mbwiza in censored
form. The sacred midnight dance is not that simple harmless dance everyone
knows; the sacred midnight dance is that form of M’mbwiza that a people enjoy in
the dead of night, away from eyes of youths and strangers. M’mbwiza is a sacred
exchange of happiness where partners stick to each other as though preventing
each from escaping. It is a dance we have obstinately refused to let go despite
the obvious accompanying dangers today.
Themes for the rest of the stories
revolve around the sins of corruption, senseless ritual killings, child
marriage, infidelity, politics and lies, and xenophobia.
The
Sacred Midnight Dance and Other Stories is a collection of eleven
stories, each one of them on something that presses heavily on the writer about
his country—a small but great African nation of Malawi.
Table
of Contents
New Brand of Aftershave
Albertina
Death of Safu Sajeni PP Bamusi, Rtd
Private Member’s Bill No 12 of 2019
The Sacred Midnight Dance
The Day the Rainbow Disappeared
The People versus Kaphulika
Punctured Conscience
Touch ye not my Anointed
Last Witness Standing
New Father for Phunzo and Me
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