Guns blazing! Government tells MCP they are barking at the wrong tree over Kamuzu Day chaos

…Critics warn DPP teargas response risks police state

Malawi government has come out guns blazing against opposition Malawi Congress Party (MCP), telling Lazarus Chakwera and MCP leadership bluntly that they are barking at the wrong tree over the Kamuzu Day chaos. Government insists Chakwera and MCP were barred from the official commemoration by the Kamuzu family as organisers of this year’s event.

In a press release signed by government spokesperson and ICT Minister, Shadric Namalomba, government said yesterday’s Kamuzu Day event was not organised by government at all, essentially telling MCP and Chakwera to blame the Kamuzu family.

“The decision to exclude the MCP was made by Hon. Kandodo and the Kamuzu family. Government had nothing to do with it,” the statement reads. President Mutharika, the release adds, was himself merely invited as a guest of honour and delegated Minister Alfred Gangata to represent him when he could not attend.

On the teargas, government was unapologetic. The statement says MCP organised a march “without clearance” from police or the Lilongwe City Council, describing it as a deliberate violation of the law that posed a risk of public disorder and desecration of the mausoleum.

“Faced with an unlawful assembly, the Police acted with professionalism and restraint. No one, including any political party, is exempt from the law. The MCP’s failure to follow this process was a choice. The consequences were entirely of their own making,” the statement says.

Government closed with a direct swipe at MCP leadership. “Yesterday’s events could have been avoided had the leadership of MCP not chosen to place itself above the law.”

However, not everyone is buying the government’s version. Critics have warned that the teargas response risks sending Malawi down the path of a police state, arguing that firing teargas at unarmed civilians trying to lay a wreath for a dead president is a line that should never be crossed regardless of whether the march was sanctioned or not.

Some have gone further, drawing a direct comparison to the MCP youth wingers who unleashed the rule of terror by descending on DPP supporters at Mbowe filling station with machetes. The argument being made is that teargas against civilians and pangas against opponents are two sides of the same intolerance and that Malawi cannot afford either, whichever party is in power.

The deeper irony of Wednesday’s events is lost on no one who knows Malawian history. Kamuzu Banda, the man MCP marched to honour, was himself a despot who ruled Malawi with an iron fist from 1964 to 1994 and systematically purged the very people who founded the Malawi Congress Party.

Orton Chirwa, Kanyama Chiume, Dunduzu Chisiza, Henry Chipembere, Rose Chibambo and James Sangala, the men and women who built MCP, were expelled, exiled, imprisoned or died under suspicious circumstances during Kamuzu’s long reign of power, or as his critics say, rule of terror. The party that Chakwera now leads was hollowed out by the man whose mausoleum they were marching to. While that history does not make the teargas right, it does make the politics complicated.

Former President Chakwera had to be rescued from the teargas filled zone on Wednesday. Ironically, he had been speaking at a podium decorated in his own regalia rather than Kamuzu Banda’s before the chaos erupted, criticising government for political persecution.

The image of a man fleeing teargas after speaking against persecution, from a platform bearing his own face on a day meant to honour someone else, captured everything about Wednesday’s Kamuzu Day in one moment. Meanwhile, United Democratic Front (UDF) President Atupele Muluzi has condemned the incident as deeply unfortunate and urged Malawians who value peace to condemn it.

However, not all the criticism is aimed at government. MCP’s own lawmaker for Nkhotakota Central, legislator Sylvester Ayuba James, has turned the gun on his own party president, saying what Chakwera experienced on Wednesday is a direct consequence of his own failure to reform the Malawi Police Service during his time in power.

Ayuba James accused Chakwera of remaining silent and watching with smiles while peaceful demonstrators were being whacked by bloodthirsty supporters to silence dissenting views during his time in office as the President.

He recalled several incidents between 2018 and 2020 when MCP members allegedly suffered abuse at the hands of Police under the Democratic Progressive Party administration, including the teargassing of Chakwera at the party headquarters during a meeting with diplomats and the alleged attack on MCP offices during the 2019 post-election protests.

“For me, those incidents and a few others should have equipped Dr. Chakwera with the right anger to reform the police once he got in power, so that when he is out of it, he could be treated much better and live in a more civilised world. But what did MCP and Chakwera do with the Police during their five years of power?” queried Ayuba James.