/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC-MALAWI: Family of Reggae Star Seeks Redress

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Anderson Zalanje

LILONGWE, Jun 18 2002 (IPS) - The family of Malawi’s Reggae King, Evison Matafale, who died mysteriously in police custody, is seeking compensation.

The 32-year-old reggae star died on Nov. 27, 2001 – three days after the police picked him up at his mother’s house in Chileka, about 12 kilometres north of the commercial capital, Blantyre.

Matafale was arrested on allegations of “publishing seditious material that could cause alarm and incite anarchy”.

But Malawi’s Police chief, Joseph Aironi, has ruled out paying compensation, saying both the presidential and independent commissions of inquiry had cleared the police of any wrongdoing.

“The inquiries clearly stated that the police did not kill Matafale,” says Aironi.

But David Nungu of the Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC), who is helping the family get the compensation, says the police aggravated the circumstances that led to the musician’s death.

“We feel that police were at fault by torturing Matafale,” he says.

A joint inquiry by MHCR, the Ombudsman and Prisons Inspectorate also has recommended that Matafale’s family be compensated by the police.

“It is the conviction of this inquiry that Matafale was subjected to torture, as the treatment he received was without doubt cruel, inhuman and degrading,” says the report.

It reveals that Matafale, who spent three days in jail under appalling conditions, lived on fruits brought to him by his Rastafarian friends.

At the police station, the musician was left to sleep rough on the veranda despite having tuberculosis.

The police only took him to hospital after his father, Clifford Matafale, pleaded with them to allow his ailing son to get medical treatment.

The circumstances surrounding Matafale’s death have remained patchy. Kondwani Mlauzi, a minibus driver, claims he saw Matafale being ‘beaten’ along Chileka-Blantyre road.

“I was dropping some passengers at Cold Storage stage and in front of me, a police Land Rover was parked by the roadside. Suddenly, a man jumped off the vehicle and started running towards a welding shop, a few metres from where the Land Rover had parked.

“Then some policemen started shouting out, ‘thief, thief’, at the fleeing man. Someone stoned him and he collapsed; but the man got up and continued running. Then there was a gunshot. When he stopped, I realised it was Matafale.”

Chizondi Fumulani, a member of Matafale’s Black Missionaries Band, says the problem began at “around 6:00AM (Nov 24) when five uniformed police officers arrived and demanded to search the musician’s mother’s house.”

They found nothing and asked Matafale to sign a search warrant, before leaving the house. A few hours later four of the officers returned in a Land Rover.

“They arrived at around 10:00AM and said they wanted to take Matafale’s statement at the Chileka Police station,” says Fumulani.

“I heard his mother trying to reason with them that the singer was sick and that they should not take him far. The officers promised to bring him back as soon as they had taken his statement. They never kept their word,” says Fumulani.

Matafale died in Lilongwe Central Hospital and the first post-mortem revealed that he was in poor health.

The second post-mortem, demanded by his brother, Davis Kapito, a senior member of the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) and his uncle, Charles Gunsaru, revealed internal bleeding.

President Bakili Muluzi, worried that the circumstances that led to Matafale’s demise could tarnish the image of his government, instituted a commission of inquiry to probe the death of Malawi’s most celebrated Reggae star.