Photo: Times

I have watched closely the charges brought forward against the alleged mercenaries that terrorised people holding dissenting views during the administration of Lazarus Chakwera and his Malawi Congress Party (MCP). One charge is still missing.

I have been waiting, yet I have not seen the terrorism charges being advanced. Perhaps there are fears over how the other flank would react. It is in my strongest belief that they must be charged with acts of terrorism, for that is precisely what they committed. One may ask what Malawian law says on terror. Let me pause this question for a moment and simply show how their acts constitute terror using my own experience.

There are several other examples. From several other people.

I made a decision when I first heard that a wing of MCP youth were being trained at a Malawi Police college that I would not visit Malawi unless the previous government was removed by the ballot from power. Following the onslaught on innocent lives that mercenaries associated with Malawi Congress Party carried out, my decision was cemented. This was the second time I was deeply afraid to even consider visiting the place I call home while seated somewhere ‘by the rivers of Babylon’. Even my plan to head to Zambia and meet some colleagues from Malawi for the Anti-Imperial forum I was co-organising was abandoned. ‘Why?’, you may ask.

We all know how people lost their lives through letter bombs in neighbouring countries during MCP’s first tyrannical rule. Do you remember Attati Mpakati. I was scared. All plans were shelved for my forum was not put on hold but purged!

Then the Mbowe Filling Station incident happened. But the terror attacks at Parliament targeted at the opposition were the final nail on the coffin. It was unprecedented except during the first tyrannical regime of MCP and the party’s life president, H Kamuzu Banda. So these acts evolved what we have been reading in And Crocodiles Are Hungry at Night or Political Prisoner 3/75.

If such an act of terror could be unleashed upon lawmakers within the vicinity of armed police forces, ‘Who am I? What of my family?’ I asked. I read that Sylvester Namiwa was even attacked in full view of the Malawi Army. Those officers must face the arm of military law.

On my part, a hard decision had to be made, and I reminded myself why I left the country in January 2022. It was not for green pasture. Getting that job was by all means, secondary! I kept reminding my family members and friends: do you see the animosity in the eyes of [name redacted] when he talks about the opposition and anyone holding dissenting views. A friend who had returned home from the United Kingdom survived the filling station onslaught and came back to the United Kingdom in a state of mental terror. Several others who could sought asylum in different parts of Malawi on political grounds. While I did not do so because it was not the path I ever planned, it demonstrates how terrorised we (those of us associated with the opposition) were.

So when all charges are eventually brought against these thugs, my plea to the Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions is this: bring terror charges against these individuals and their masters. These acts should never be allowed to recur. Not in a democratic state like Malawi. When former president Joyce Banda posted about the fate of Saulos K Chilima, JB’s post revealed the tyrannical instincts of those who viewed dissenters as threats in the previous administration.

Several others whose names we may never know died. Others will live with disabilities forever from machetes and zibonga.

It is not only the use of explosives or firearms that falls within the scope of the United Nations counterterrorism conventions as localised under the Financial Crimes Act 2(1). Anyone who financed these operations must be held accountable under sections 43 and 44 of the same Act. This must never be allowed to happen again in Malawi.

It is for this very reason that I plead to have terror charges brought against this mercenaries.

I should state that these terrorist groups did not emerge in isolation. They operated within an atmosphere that was made possible by a tyrannical administration and her agents.

That Chakwera displayed typical signs of tyranny is clear if we evoke Aristotle’s modus operandi for tyrants. Here is an example. The Director of the Anti Corruption Bureau, Martha Chizuma, was hounded like a criminal in the thicket of one December night’s darkness, only allowed to put on a pair of running tracksuit. Her only crime was criticising the President for enabling and protecting corruption through silence, inaction, or direct obstruction of the Bureau’s work. She shared her criticism with someone she considered a friend.

One can argue that this is not tyrannical.

“A tyrant should also endeavour to know what each of his subjects says or does, and should employ spies, like the female detectives at Syracuse, and the eavesdroppers whom Hiero was in the habit of sending to any place of resort or meeting. For the fear of informers prevents people from speaking their minds, and if they do, they are more easily found out” thus says Aristotle.

So why did Chakwera rely on Kayuni, the Director of Public Prosecutions, as his dog to go after Chizuma during moments of political tension. On this, Aristotle advises tyrants to only “distribute honour himself, but punishment should be inflicted by officers and courts of law” to evoke a sense of rule of law. Thus, Chizuma’s arrest was an unprecedented indictment of the country’s governance in a typical tyrannical fashion.

Kayuni’s suspension was all theatrical, not real. For what happened next revealed the game. What happened next. Are you a stranger in Jerusalem? Was he not honoured by Chakwera by being appointed Secretary to the Ministry of Homeland, where the Malawi Police that arrested Chizuma sits, before being appointed a High Court judge (not sure he accepted this role)?

Examples that hints on tyrannical undertakings are countless. I will not talk about Chakwera’s defence when he was called out by the BBC for hiring his daughter or son in law to accompany him to a virtual conference in the United Kingdom. Just watch that BBC clip again. Tyrants!!

As for his religious belief, Aristotle captures it even more vividly: “A tyrant should appear to be particularly earnest in the service of the gods; for if men think that a ruler is religious and reverent, they are less afraid of suffering injustice at his hands, and are less disposed to conspire against him, believing that he has the gods fighting on his side”. There is a reason he travelled across the country attending services and issuing public sermons, whether on the drought or any crisis requiring decisive action. He invoked God in place of governance. Chakwera followed to the letter Aristotle’s teachings on how to be tyrant.

Such tyrannical dispassion made it possible for acts of terror by armed wings or hired mercenaries to be carried out without fear of the law.  Whether the ones arrested were hired mercenaries or part of the armed wing is yet to be established. But what is evident, however, is that their acts tick several boxes on acts of terror in our laws, and the UN’s convention on this topic.

It is against this background that I believe charges relating to terrorism must be prepared and brought against them. Let the law they trampled upon fall on them with the weight of a ton of brick to serve as a lesson that no act of terrorism must ever be permitted within Malawi.