This raises the cruel paradox that this well-run election may restore a Hastings Kamuzu Banda-style autocracy to Malawi in the person of Mutharika with his copious use of state resources to build his political supremacy...
Malawi's first President Hastings Kamuzu Banda was swept to power as Premier in 1963 on a nationalist ticket which included strong opposition to white domination...
When Hastings Banda then Bakili Muluzi ruled Malawi and Kenneth Kaunda then Levy Mwanawasa ruled Zambia the issue had little significance for domestic politics...
Hastings Banda's body is enshrined in a brand-new mausoleum in Lilongwe where his Zambian namesake has just paid ritual respects...
Yet people distrust Tembo 77 from his time in the Hastings Kamuzu Banda dictatorship while Mpinganjira does not inspire much confidence...
If Muluzi were out of the race he might exert his old electoral magic and swing his party behind Tembo (anacolyte of the long-time dictator Hastings Kamuzu Banda) accepting for himself the consolation prize of the vice-presidency or a newly created prime ministry...
Mutharika's instincts are reinforced by operators such as Hetherwick Ntaba (current Secretary General of the governing DPP and like Tembo once an acolyte of the late President Hastings Kamuzu Banda) who lurk in the shadows of the presidential state houses...
President Bingu wa Mutharika boasts that he is a disciple of founding President Hastings Kamuzu Banda...
The presidential hopefuls to be proposed and acclaimed are usually the bosses who chair the committees: incumbent President Bingu wa Mutharika in the Democratic People's Party (DPP); the late President Hastings Kamuzu Banda's party baron John Tembo in the Malawi Congress Party (MCP); Muluzi in the UDF...
Oppositionists suspect that having not been personally involved in the fight to end the dictatorship of the late President Hastings Kamuzu Banda Mutharika is not fully committed to the multiparty constitution of 1994 but the same might be said of Tembo Banda's long-time right-hand man...
Vol 48 No 22 |
- MALAWI
- ZIMBABWE
Supporters and critics testify to his enthusiasm for Malawi’s autocratic first President Hastings Kamuzu Banda who suppressed dissent even more ruthlessly than Mugabe...
In this poisonous climate memories of the ruthless authoritarianism of the late President Hastings Kamuzu Banda and the cynical glad-handing of Muluzi can exercise fatal charms...
