Bury the hatchet today, hatch a plot to bury each other tomorrow
Malawi president drops charges against his deputy.
Josephine Chinele in Blantyre
Malawi’s vice-presidents never get along with their bosses. It’s a 30-year trend that started with Bakili Muluzi and his deputy Justin Malewezi, the first pair to lead democratic Malawi, and seems to continue with the current president and vice-president, Lazarus Chakwera and Saulos Chilima.
Months before the 2004 presidential election, Malewezi defected from the party led by the president he had served under for 10 years, aligning himself instead with opposition leader Aleke Banda. Muluzi may not have liked it but there was nothing he could do.
The pair had been the first to contest for Malawian leadership as running mates under a new Constitution that ushered in multi-party democracy in 1994. By making the vice-president an elected official, that Constitution made those in the position extremely powerful – and unfireable.
In 2022, two years into their joint leadership, President Chakwera stripped Chilima of all his delegated duties, after the vice-president appeared on a list of 84 government officials who had allegedly accepted gifts from Malawi-born British businessman Zuneth Sattar.
Chilima, who was also deputy to former president Peter Mutharika, was accused of accepting $280,000 from the businessman. In exchange, Chilima allegedly granted Sattar lucrative government contracts. Chilima denies wrongdoing. Despite the severity of these allegations, Chilima could not be fired – because he was elected, not appointed.
The episode felt like déjà vu. Chilima had only entered the alliance with Chakwera after falling out with his boss, former president Peter Mutharika. Before that, then-president Bingu wa Mutharika had brought treason charges against his vice president Cassim Chilumpha. Joyce Banda’s deputy, Khumbo Kachali, endorsed her rival in the 2014 election. And, of course, there was the acrimony between Muluzi and Malewezi.
Perhaps it just isn’t meant to be between elected presidents and their elected deputies. But if that is the case, Chakwera and Chilima have taken the “conscious uncoupling” route: in public they appeared largely civil, even friendly, with each other, even as the prosecution gathered evidence.
Can’t live with or without them
Then, this month, Chakwera’s government dropped the corruption charges against Chilima, triggering even more speculation about how Malawi’s perennial power stalemate at the top works – or rather, how it doesn’t.
“Discontinuing this case is a calculated move to prevent Chilima from spilling the beans on people close to the presidency,” said Michael Kaiyatsa, who heads the Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation.
“I would not read too much into this prosecution, and interpret it as consistent with previous episodes of bad blood between presidents and their deputies,” said Boniface Dulani, a political commentator at the University of Malawi. “Both parties stood to lose from pursuing this case further. It’s possible that this is a behind-the-scenes political arrangement with eyes on the 2025 elections.”
This would be ironic: the one time in 30 years that a president and vice-president manage to resolve their differences, is probably the one time they should not have.
“It doesn’t give hope for civil society. It’s a signal that the fight against corruption is only for small and not big fish as shown here,” said Kaiyatsa.