POLITICS-MALAWI: Banda’s Death Marks The End Of An Era

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru and Lewis Machipisa

HARARE, Nov 26 1997 (IPS) - The death of former Malawian President Hastings Kamuzu Banda marks the symbolic end of an era that began in 1966 with a spirit of hope, but turned into a 30-year reign characterised by autocratic rule and fear.

Banda, officially 91 but thought to be older, died Tuesday night of respiratory failure, according to Amelda Swartz, a spokeswoman at the Gardens City Clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the former head of state had been under intensive care for more than a week. She said his body had been transferred from the hospital to a funeral parlour from where it would be transported to Malawi.

Upon hearing of Banda’s death, Malawi President Bakili Muluzi Wednesday called an emergency cabinet meeting and ordered all flags to be flown at half mast until the burial of his predecessor.

Before Banda was flown to South Africa, Muluzi, Health Minister Harry Thompson and other senior officials had visited him on Nov. 17 at a Blantyre hospital where he had been admitted two days before, suffering from pneumonia and high fever.

Banda, who retired from politics earlier this year, had been in poor health since a brain tumour operation in a South African hospital about three years ago.

Albert Upindi, who is secretary to both the president and the cabinet, said the news of his death was received with sadness in Malawi. “There is sadness everywhere,” he told a European radio station on Wednesday.

Upindi said the sombre mood in Malawi indicated that the country’s 11.4 million people had put the brutality with which Banda’s regime was associated behind them.

This view is not shared by everyone. “It is unfortunate that the government of Muluzi is organising a funeral for Banda. Banda was a murderer who fed the bodies of his political opponents to crocodiles,” said a Malawian national living here.

Banda used to hit his political opponents on the head with a hammer until they passed out, she told IPS on Wednesday. “That is the type of a man the government of President Muluzi is honouring by organising a funeral for him,” she added bitterly.

The source, who preferred anonymity, said Banda’s regime had touched on the life of every Malawian. “For example, if you wrapped a fish in a newspaper bearing the picture of Banda, you went to prison,” she recalled. “So many innocent people went to prison as a result of that.”

A master in the art of news blackouts, Banda made sure that he granted no visa to foreign journalists to report on what was happening in Malawi, she added.

Vanani Nyangulu, a Malawian who went into exile more than 30 years ago, agreed. “Banda couldn’t allow Orton Chirwa to be given a decent funeral. He couldn’t allow Chirwa’s widow to come out of prison to mourn him and yet the man was killed in prison. Chirwa died in chains and why should Banda get what he denied others,” asked Nyangulu.

Chirwa, Malawi’s first Attorney General, was kidnapped on the Zambia-Malawi border in December 1981 by the dreaded Young Pioneers, a paramilitary militia used by Banda to suppress dissent.

The 7,000-strong Young Pioneers — formed following a cabinet crisis soon after independence in 1964 — have been linked to a number of assassinations both within and outside Malawi.

Nyangulu, who is now practicing law here, said he escaped the Young Pioneers when they tried to kill him by a letter bomb in Zambia in 1979. “I was lucky because the Zambian security got hold of the letter and defused it,” he said.

Nyangulu said Banda, invited in 1957 from Britain to lead an anti-colonial campaign for independence, left behind a legacy of fear and mistrust. “For over 30 years, every Malawian was a virtual prisoner whether in the prison or in the home.”

“Men could not discuss anything with their wives because everybody was an informer. Everybody was compelled to be a member of Malawi Congress Party which Banda headed,” said Nyangulu. “We had a situation where everybody was living in fear. It was the police state of the worst kind. In my view he was worse than Mobutu (Sese Seko) in the former Zaire.

“The system of government was either you are with me or against me. You couldn’t have neutral political views. I strongly believe that if the opinion of the Malawi people were sought they would say no to a state funeral for Banda.”

Nyangulu went into exile in 1964 at the age of 25 after he had refused to be associated with the Young Pioneers. He was arrested, but on that same day he was smuggled across the border to Zambia by his cousin who was a policeman. He spent 15 years in the neighbouring country.

It took nearly three decades for the wind of change to reach Malawi, which earned the dubious distinction of being ruled by the only African leader to have openly maintained links with the former apartheid regime in South Africa,.

In 1992, donor pressure forced Banda to accept growing demands for multi-party democracy. Then, on May 19, 1994, the Southern African nation held its first multiparty polls after 30 years of single-party rule. Banda stood against four others in the presidential election, but was soundly beaten by Muluzi. The United Democratic Party (UDP) leader secured 1.4 million votes to Banda’s 996,363 out of a total of 3.7 million registered voters.

Banda was placed under house arrest on Jan. 4, 1995 when a commission of inquiry found that four politicians who died in 1983 had been murdered by police on the orders of his regime, which had attributed their deaths to a car accident.

He escaped trial since doctors found him unfit to appear in court and the judge eventually quashed the case.