President Arthur Peter Mutharika (APM) is alive, fighting and going nowhere. After weeks of silence that fuelled health speculation across Malawi, the president has come out swinging, telling those who predicted his death that they will die before he does.
“Ine ndiri pano mpaka 2030. Kuchoka 2030, DPP ikupitilira. Ena aja akunena zosiyanasiyana kuti wafa, akudwala, afa ndiwowo. Ati amfa by December. Wina wa ku Nigeria amenena zimenezo, mukuziwa kumene ali? Ali 6 feet down. Ine ndilipano ndikupuma mpweya, clean oxygen. Choncho tisamafunile anthu zooipa ai (I am here until 2030 and DPP will continue running this country even after my retirement. Some people have been saying I am dead, terminally ill, or that I will die by December. It is them who will die. There was someone in Nigeria who made a prophecy about my death but he died first. I am still here while he is 6 feet under. Let us not wish death on other people but good health)” said the 85 year old president.
The man from Nigeria Mutharika referred to is widely understood to be the late Prophet TB Joshua, who allegedly predicted the president’s death. TB Joshua died in 2021. Mutharika is still here and made sure everyone knows it when he arrived in Lilongwe following his tour of the commercial city, Blantyre.
The health rumours had been spreading like wildfire on social media, with allegations that medical specialists had on one occasion been flown in from South Africa to attend to him. The speculation intensified after Mutharika missed the University of Malawi’s first graduation session in Zomba, where the sitting president traditionally presides as university chancellor.
His cabinet ministers had increasingly been standing in for him at public engagements — a pattern that his former running mate Atupele Muluzi publicly called out, demanding Mutharika to speak to the nation directly over the fuel and electricity crises.
APM moved to kill the speculation first in an interview with the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), then by showing up to a high-level meeting with World Bank officials, before delivering his most combative public statement yet.
