Malawi’s former deputy Ambassador to Germany, Thokozani Manyika Banda has indicated that he will contest for the presidency in the forthcoming 2025 General Elections.
Banda, who is son to late politician Aleke Banda, made the remarks Wednesday in Lilongwe during a press briefing.
Among others, he aims at creating a new and viable alternative leadership for Malawi, one that is based on five foundation tones for our Republic of Malawi, summed up in his campaign theme Chuma Ku Wanthu.
He said that he is the best candidate to bail the country out of the many challenges it is facing, by among others, reducing expenditure and boosting export of Malawian products to earn more foreign exchange.
“The norm is that most political platforms do not bother to address the basic needs of the majority of Malawians. Furthermore, with close to two-thirds of citizens being below the age of 35, it makes no sense.
“The tax regime must be a redistributive regime that prioritises fully functional social services (such as hospitals, schools and universities, extension services) over foreign or elite beneficiaries, all foreign direct investment must have meaningful, clearly defined local beneficiation components, government should actively project and protect the socioeconomic viability of Malawians in the diaspora, and the Malawi economy should be positioned for maximal integration with the broader African economy
“First, I want to ask for your support in helping me lead a change in shifting politics from being about persons and their political parties to being about policies for national and community development for the benefit of Malawians. This will require us to leave gutter politics to gutter-politicians. We will need to leave tribal politics to tribalists. We will need to be disciplined, focused, and intentional as we teach these existing parties lessons in leadership competence and policy credibility.
“Secondly, I want to ask for your support in helping me mobilize a new generation of intelligent, competent, uncorrupted and uncorruptible young Malawians so that they can join me in standing as candidates in our country’s Tripartite elections in September 2025.
“We need to laws that force lawmakers to be more accountable to their constituents than to their political parties. We need to elect brand new parliamentarians who will make the urgent changes to our laws so that they are quick to bring Justice to protect our citizens from abuse, to protect our citizens from being abused by politicians, by government officials, by law enforcers, from being abused by judicial processes, by landlords, by employers, by investors.
“I close with a patriotic kind word to my future predecessor, Lazarus Chakwera. I pray that God will bless him with the wisdom necessary for alleviating the extreme suffering that Malawians are facing. I pray that his government and his cohort of alliance partners will respect all the laws of this land in these remaining two years of their mandate,” he said
Banda is a former Malawian diplomat turned politician who has, for the past several years, been preparing for his second bid for the Malawian presidency. Born in 1964, Mr. Banda overcame both internal and external exile, playing an instrumental role in the democratisation of Malawi in the early 1990s and thereafter serving as a senior diplomat to Japan (and ASEAN nations) and to Germany, the World Trade Organization and neighbouring European nations.
