Chakwera's Hurry to Destruction

The use of Tipp Ex in the 2019 elections was first reported at Chinsapo in Lilongwe on the night of 21 May.

A DPP monitor noted the correctional fluid on one of the centre’s result tabulation tables.  Immediately, the monitor alerted members of DPP Monitors Whatsapp group. They agreed to stay awake and alert all night.   

Some minutes after the Whatsapp alert, three DPP monitors at a centre in Dowa, outside Kamuzu International Airport, noticed Tipp Ex and queried attempts to change figures.  MCP monitors became angry and were about to beat up the three DPP monitors when they ran away to the airport for safety. They never returned to the centre. They called a friend from town to pick them up from the airport.

There are such stories of violence against DPP and UTM monitors in some parts of the country. But there is also good news: MEC officers remained vigilant and MCP’s plan of tampering with results in favour of Lazarus Chakwera, collapsed.

MEC chairperson Jane Ansah’s question, “who gave you Tipp ex?” has not been understood up to now. It is a reflective question for all of us because Ansah is aware Tipp-Ex was introduced by the MCP and her question was meant to help us to think deeply about MCP’s hidden agenda. In addition, her question was meant to inspire journalists to investigate Tipp Ex in the election.

Tipp Ex failed. MCP did not rig the election because MEC systems were tight and staff tabulated results professionally. MEC’s professionalism annoyed MCP so much that the party started drama to damage the elections that were managed professionally, according to party monitors and electoral institutions, both local and foreign. MCP’s demand for Ansah to resign is the work of Chakwera. He is as such. He loves being what he is not.

It is not the first time for Chakwera to behave so. The story of his life shows a man who does what he preaches against or a man who preaches against what he does.

In 2018, the Ministry of Finance disbursed K4 billion development fund to all parliamentarians. Chakwera and his MCP approved the allocation in Parliament on Thursday, 1 March, 2018, and received an amount allocated to each MP. The same Chakwera sent his boy Timothy Mtambo, a well-known MCP functionary, who trades under human rights activism, to organise demonstrations against the development funding. Chakwera joined the demonstrations against funding that he supported, approved and received.  

Chakwera portrays himself as an angel sent from heaven but he is not. Instead, he is a troubled human being ready to shed blood to quench his hunger for power.

He has failed to take MCP to victory twice and the next move was for him to resign to pave way for someone else. Instead, Chakwera is clinging to MCP’s presidency, searching for a third term via the court. It is funny, isn’t it? How Chakwera is managing to fool MCP for him to remain the party’s president.

This is a Chakwera who, during a press briefing on 2 November 2018, called Mutharika a “pathological liar.” Yet in reality, Chakwera is that “pathological liar.” He has, for example, been referring to present demonstrations as peaceful yet allowing people from his area to terrorise motorists on Kasiya Road. Some motorists had to pay up to K20,000 to buy their way.

Chakwera is requiring MCP MPs to ferry hundreds of people armed with pangas from rural areas of central region to the capital for demonstrations, a story that journalists have chosen to ignore.

This is a Chakwera who asked MEC to release results less than 24 hours after voting closed, saying he had won and “I am the commander-in-chief” of the armed forces. And within 48 hours, the same Chakwera obtained an injunction restraining MEC from announcing results of the presidential poll.  

This is a Chakwera who failed to make an alliance with UTM and lost the election. Now he is fooling his supporters with a post-election alliance with UTM. Doing what he preached against and preaching against what he is doing. And his supporters have fallen for the childish tactic.  

This is a Chakwera who, two months before elections, was planning disturbing the elections. Yet he poses as if he did not have such an evil plan with Mtambo.

He is a Malawian but speaks with an African-American tongue. He lost an election, yet he claims victory.

This Chakwera, always wanting what he is not.

Man in a Hurry

Decades ago, Nkhoma Synod of the CCAP trained Lazarus Chakwera into ministry. But on completion of his training, Chakwera abandoned the CCAP and joined the Assemblies of God Church.

His reason was that baptism of babies practiced in the CCAP was not biblical. He wanted a church founded on the Bible. Chakwera was right on baptism, of course. The Bible, in Ephesians 4:5-6 talks, in part, of “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” 

What is this one baptism? The Bible explains itself, so we compare text with text. The baptism of Jesus Christ is described in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. All the three writers record the baptism of Jesus as an adult, not a baby. The book of Acts of Apostles chapter 8 tells a story of an Ethiopian Eunuch who met Philip, the preacher. The Ethiopian was converted and baptised. The Ethiopian was an adult, not a baby.

In the Great Commission to His disciples, Jesus Christ, in Matthew 28, says, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”
The disciples were to teach all nations. The disciples were to teach adults, not babies, and when the adults accepted Christ, the risen, they were to be baptised.

Chakwera got the Bible right. He wanted to follow the Bible and he did well to join a church that baptises adults. But joining a church that followed baptism of the Bible is what Chakwera said, not what he meant. People have a tendency to say what they don’t mean and mean what they don’t say. A critical reading of Chakwera’s change from CCAP to Assemblies of God reveals pursuit of money and power, not truth.

A student of the Bible who finds baptism truth was also likely to find a number of other truths, including truth on clean and unclean foods (Leviticus 11), truth about overcoming evil with good (Matt 4, Romans 12) and truth about the role of the church in a fallen world (Genesis 3, Hebrews, Acts of Apostles). How could a person who finds baptism truth miss Exodus Chapter 20?

Chakwera was looking for a church where he could be the top pastor. The Nkhoma Synod had established reverends and the turn for Chakwera to head the church was not any near. He could not wait. He was a man in a hurry.

Therefore, Chakwera started his ministry with a lie, not truth; in pursuit of money and power, not service in the Great Commission of Jesus Christ. He was a man in a hurry for power and money. He remains a man in a hurry for power and money, even now, in politics.

Human Rights for the Poor? No

Three people were killed for being suspected blood suckers in T/A Mabuka’s area in Mulanje on Saturday, 16 September, 2017.

A day before the Mulanje incident, two ambulances had been forcibly stopped and its drivers and passengers attacked for being suspected blood suckers in Phalombe. Reports of the two incidents were the beginning of blood sucking narratives in Malawi in 2017.

At the peak of the narratives, nine suspected blood suckers were killed by vigilantes. Services were disrupted in affected areas. For example, the Malawi Blood Transfusion Services (MBTS) suspended blood collection exercises in affected districts. Travelling at night became dangerous. Businesses closed earlier than before the narratives. Evening prayers stopped. The United Nations and Peace Corps withdrew staff from the affected areas. In short, life in Malawi changed during the period of blood sucking narratives.

An exceptionally brilliant psychologist explained that the blood sucking narratives were an expression of social and economic tensions. “People are trying to find an explanation, some way of making sense of what is happening [in their lives]…. It’s almost a symbolic representation of the life, blood or hope being drawn out of them, being sucked out of them,” he said.

Nobody listened to the wisdom of the psychologist. Nobody attempted to understand what the people were demonstrating against through the blood sucking narratives. The indigenous voice of blood sucking narratives was ignored. Instead, people in the areas were called names.

The United Nations Department of Safety and Security, based on information from UN officers in Malawi, suggested that blood sucking narratives were a product of “illiteracy” and “idle minds.”

The Medical Society of Malawi called blood sucking narratives a mental disorder. “It is the considered view of the Society that such blood suckers do not exist! This is purely Mass Hysteria,” said the Society in a statement.

The Society added that it was disappointed with mainstream and social media, saying there had “been irresponsible sensationalisation of rumours of blood sucking vampires” and that this had “the potency of perpetuating fear and anxiety in the population, with the exponential negative effects we have seen so far.”

Civil Society Organisations added their voice to the story of the moment. “Civil Society Organisations meeting in Lilongwe on 20th October 2017, would like to condemn in the strongest terms, the continued descent into anarchy brought about by the irrational and unsubstantiated belief in superstition and witchcraft characterised with rumour mongering, in the ongoing chaos that has ensued with the rash of accusations of bloodsuckers rampaging in the districts of Mulanje, Thyolo, Chiradzulu, Nsanje [and] Blantyre,” said a statement signed by Timothy Mtambo and his usual company.

The CSOs noted that the crisis was “creating space for unscrupulous individuals to break the law.” The CSOs said they believed that the “main factor” was “thugs who are targeting the rich to steal and damage property,” clearly accusing the poor of stealing.

The statement cited a Blantyre incident in which a medical doctor returning from work was attacked as a “typical example of how tactful these thugs are using fear to steal from people in the name of hunting for blood suckers.”

On 13th October, 2017, the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) issued a statement that started by describing 2015 and 2016 as years characterised by bad news in Malawi.

“In the past two years, Malawi has experienced social cultural beliefs that are very archaic, un-progressive and detrimental to the development of this country. These trends have certainly put our country on a hot spot negatively,” said CCJP.

Every institution bashed the people for demonstrating against their hardships. Not even a single institution listened to the expert, the psychologist, that blood sucking was a demonstration against hardships people were facing.

In Mulanje and Phalombe people had grown and harvested a lot of pigeon peas in 2017 in anticipation of good or better prices than the previous year. In 2016, the crop was selling at K700 per kg. This was the first time pigeon peas had fetched such high prices and people in the districts had legitimate high expectations for 2017. However, the price on the market was in some cases as low as K100 per kg.

Waiting for an annual income that never came was a tragedy. And tragedy has no other name. People were angry and had to demonstrate. The demonstrations spread to Nsanje, parts of Zomba, Blantyre and Karonga where people had different hardships.

Now July 2019, some people are demonstrating against their loss in the May elections, and all the organisations that spoke against the 2017 demonstrations are silent. The UN is silent. CCJP is silent. The Medical Association of Malawi is silent. Mtambo who called the 2017 demonstrations archaic and barbaric is describing his demonstrations as a human right.

So, when rural community members demonstrate and engage in violence, it is illiteracy, idleness, barbaric, archaic, mass hysteria, superstition and witchcraft. When urban community members demonstrate and engage in violence, it is a human right.

When Chakwera wearing a suit runs on the road with thousands, it is a human right. When rural people do the same, it is mass hysteria. When a former Vice President plays the choir master role in a demonstration, it is his human right and pursuit of justice, not a product of mass hysteria.

There is a way in which rural communities of Malawi are considered second-class citizens. It seems human rights are for urban communities, the elite, because even the poor urban residents are classified with similar adjectives as rural community members.

But never be fooled. There are ways in which rural community members hit back at elite, urban residents. Blood sucking was one way. They will hit back at the foolishness of the violent demonstrations happening now, some day.

There was a Vice President

The end of Saulos Chilima’s political career was in the beginning of UTM. A young man who was rising is now falling down, disappearing into a forgotten past.

It was Callista Mutharika who first announced that the DPP convention should elect Chilima as the party's presidential candidate for the May 2019 elections. But in doing so, Callista made a cultural mistake that killed Chilima in his political womb. (The two-part cultural mistake will be detailed in a story being written now.)

The story of Chilima shall be told for generations as an example of what not to do. Here is a Vice President who has become an embarrassment to himself and his supporters.

One family in Chigumula had so much faith in Chilima. The family supported him with vehicles and money. “We were foolish to help him,” a family member said recently. The family has lost faith in Chilima because of his actions since his loss in the May elections.

Chilima has been miscalculating his moves since he resigned from DPP. His plan to take over DPP from APM collapsed. Weeks before the convention, the situation became clear that Chilima could not beat APM.

UTM was not in Chilima’s political plans. He had flown too high and did not find the skies he thought would give him a political home. He fell down and, to cover his shame, formed the UTM.
He traveled to US, Nigeria and UK on fund raising mission but came back without the anticipated amounts. He had to find a way of raising money locally and loans may not be ruled out.

He told his supporters that he would win the election. He lost, a miserable number three. He told his supporters that he had a plethora of evidence that the May election was rigged. He has failed to produce that evidence in court. He helped organise and participated in demonstrations, saying Tipp Ex messed up results tabulation. But he has told the court in Lilongwe that Tipp Ex did not affect vote counting and tabulation.

Chilima is a man who was going to be an example of progress; now he is an example of regression. He was supposed to be in his second term as Vice President of Malawi but he has added the prefix “former” to his title. He was supposed to be in State House, but he is now standing hundreds of metres away from State House during demonstrations. He was supposed to be protected by men in camouflage, but he is the man in camouflage, matching on the roads of Malawi. He was supposed to be in a job, he is now jobless.

If he had been culturally and politically wise, Chilima would have been speaking at international conferences. He would have been an expert in the complex subject of balancing private and public sectors. Not so: a man who was supposed to be writing books on topics of global interest has now become a topic in books about failed politicians.

Chilima was supposed to be growing into an elderly states man, but he is turning into a boy, kind of ending in the beginning of his political life.

These Two Need a Meeting with Jesus

The night was almost over. The sea was calm after a stormy night. The disciples heard their Teacher, Jesus Christ, speak to the sea, “peace be still,” and nature obeyed. And the disciples wondered at a man who could speak to nature!

Matthew, the Gospel writer, records an interesting event after Jesus and his disciples ended their journey on a stormy sea that became calm.

In Chapter 8 Matthew says, “And when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demoniacs met him, coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no one could pass that way.” Notice that Jesus was alone. The disciples stood at a distance, or had taken a different route because “no one could pass” the road that Jesus took. There were two boys, the Bible calls them demoniacs, those possessed by demons.

The two lived in a graveyard. They were dangerous. They injured people. They did not listen to anyone, not even to themselves because they had lost conscious. No wonder, no one could pass that way. And that was the way Jesus took, says the Bible.

The description of the two demoniacs in the Bible fits well with Timothy Mtambo and Gift Trappence. These two boys, like the possessed, live in their own world. They do not listen to anyone. They only speak. One would say, Mtambo and Trappence have no ears. They have a mouth only.
They speak as if they are the last authority in the universe, almost like they created life. They love violence. They are happy to see private and public property destroyed. Do they have conscious at all? No. People possessed by demons do not have conscious.

That morning, when Jesus took the way that all people avoided, he met the two demoniacs. Matthew records an interesting meeting. And behold, the demons cried out, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?”

The disciples, watching from a distance and catching the conversation, walked towards Jesus but still at a distance. Jesus did not hurry to cast out the demons. He let them speak. In doing so, Jesus was helping the two boys to understand that they needed God’s power to live a normal life, away from tombs.

Mark, a Gospel writer who is brief in his reports, reports this story with details, not typical of him. Luke has the story as well. It is John, the youngest and most beloved disciple of Jesus, that did not write the story. Perhaps John kept a distance for fear of his life and did not witness the event.

After a conversation, Jesus cast out the demons, about 4000 of them, meaning 2000 demons were in each of the two boys. Satan is real. Demons are real in our day. Mtambo and Trappence need to meet Jesus, so he can cast out demons of violence in them. (Is it not interesting that demonstrations which Mtambo and Trappence love most, seem to be an extension of the word demons?)

In speaking of his days as an organiser of demonstrations, Undule Mwakasungula has consistently said that he “was led by Satan,” a way of saying he was possessed by demons. Satan works in a way that at the possessed does not know that he is possessed until he is freed by Jesus.

One day, Jesus took the way of Undule, the way that no man could pass. That was when Undule had no ears, when he listened to no one. Jesus met Undule, in his own words, sick and on death bed. That day, Jesus touched Undule, healed him and made him a servant of the Lord.

The prayer of the faithful in Malawi should be that Jesus should take the way of Mtambo and Trappence. They need a meeting with Jesus because only Jesus can speak to people who do not listen, people without ears.

When that happens, Mtambo and Trappence shall be able to raise their hands with a joyous shout, “the Lord is good, all the time, for he saved us from demons/trations”.

Justice? What Justice?

The lead story in The Nation newspaper today is headlined “Synod Backs Costly Airport Shutdown.”

General Secretary of the Livingstonia Synod of the CCAP is quoted as saying his church is supporting demonstrations organised by HRDC. “As a church we have vowed to fight together with people who are mourning that the elections were rigged. We will make sure justice prevails.”

The reporter of the story, Andrew Nyondo, leaves Reverend Nyondo here, with that quotation and goes on to report on what HRDC and a University of Malawi academician said of the demonstrations.

You have to wonder, really: what happened to journalism in Malawi? This was time to ask the reverend a question:

Reverend, what justice are you pursuing with violent demonstrations when the matter is in court where MCP and UTM are seeking justice?

Anyway, this is journalism in Malawi. We are waiting for Zeinab Badawi to ask such valid questions?

The Nation ran a second story titled “AG ‘mired in Conflict of Interest’ in Polls Case” on its front page. The story is a failed attempt to cover up the opposition’s failure to make a case in court.

Instead, The Nation is attempting to divert attention away from Saulos Chilima’s admission that there was no rigging to a silly debate on the duties of the office of the Attorney General.
The story itself says it is within the AG’s legal mandate to represent the Malawi Electoral Commission. Yet the story attempts to label the AG as partisan as if the MEC is a political party.

Grow up guys at Nation!

There is a silent majority in Malawi that is aware that the aim of MCP (and its baby HRDC) and UTM is to topple government not to pursue justice in court. If the aim were justice in the courts, MCP (and its baby HRDC) and UTM would have waited for the court case.

But they knew from the beginning that their case was going to collapse in court, hence resorting to violence.