Exploring an African Civil Society by Gabay Clive;

Author:Gabay, Clive;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic

Chapter 4

Civil Society and Democracy in Malawi

After a few hesitant steps in the international arena the national middle classes, no longer feeling the threat of the traditional colonial power, suddenly develop great appetites.

Fanon, 1963: 186

Now with the new government, there may not be a day’s work for the civil society leadership to stand with us!

Interview with Trades Unionist, Lilongwe, November 2012

Political assassinations have not been a feature of Malawian politics since the days of Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Malawi’s former “Life-President,” who did indeed rule for most of the life that remained to him following Malawi’s independence in 1964, but has nonetheless been absent from power, and indeed from this plane of existence, for over 20 years. Even during Banda’s rule assassinations were rarely called as such, with victims more often disappeared, dying in suspicious car accidents, or, according to widespread rumors, fed to the crocodiles of the Shire River.1

For followers of Malawi’s democracy and politics it therefore came as a shock when, on September 13, 2013, the Finance Ministry Budget Director Paul Mphwiyo was gunned down outside his home by three assailants. Initial responses to the shooting from the political establishment blamed corruption. The president at the time, Joyce Banda, declared publically that she knew the identity of the attackers, and that Mphwiyo, who survived, had been about to bust a corruption ring involving civil servants making illicit payments to themselves through front companies bidding for contracts which were never carried out. A month later Banda claimed she had been misquoted, and that she was not aware of the attackers’ identities. In the meantime though, and with Mphwiyo in critical condition, other rumors circulated suggesting that the Mphwiyo had been shot by criminals looking to protect the highest levels of government (including Banda) from being implicated in the scandal.

Subsequent to these initial events, a donor-mandated and government-ordered (but delayed) audit by the UK firm Baker Tilly identified that between April and October 2013 an amount equivalent of US$30 million had been in turn stolen, paid to companies for services charged at inflated prices or paid to companies for services where no paperwork had been provided (Baker Tilly, 2014: 5). Commentators in Malawi, as well as Malawi’s international donors, have stated that this time period represents a small proportion of the period during which such illicit transactions might have been going on for (the UK government, for example, has been pushing for a more substantial audit). An example of the straightforward theft which the auditors identified is the case of Victor Sithole, an accounts assistant who was found with US$66,000 in his car, and was subsequently convicted and sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment (Mapondera, 2014). Sithole was apprehended with the money seven days before the attempt was made on Paul Mphwiyo’s life, hence the immediate speculation surrounding the shooting and about whether Mphwiyo was implicated in the plot, or about to embarrass the government by implicating it in multiple attempts to defraud the state (some rumors suggested that some of the

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