The Atlas Malawi

Tag: Martha Chizuma

  • ACB given 14 days to clarify Mkaka’s corruption allegations

    ACB given 14 days to clarify Mkaka’s corruption allegations

    Lawyers representing two organizations, Forum for National Development (END) and Centre for Mindset Change (CMC) have written the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) demanding information on the status of the probe into Malawi Congress Party (MCP) general secretary, Eisenhower Mkaka’s corruption allegations.

    Since 2022, ACB has been investigating Mkaka over the dubious purchase of a motor vehicle, a Mercedes that was allegedly thought to be a gift from businessman Zunneth Sattar.

    In a letter dated April 2 2024, lawyer Stanley Chirwa of S&M Attorneys has given the ACB 14 working days to respond failing which they will take further steps, including legal action, under sections 15 and 18 of the Access to Information Act and other applicable laws.

    In 2022, ACB director general Martha Chizuma said although the bureau was investigating the information bureau received which covers the period between March 2021 and October 2021, it took interest in the allegations against Mkaka.

    She said: “We, however, need to clarify that the investigations that the bureau is currently conducting on Zunneth Sattar’s corruption allegations are largely based on information the bureau received which covers the period between March 2021 and October 2021.

    “From the documents going around, we note that the transactions regarding this car took place in 2020. This is outside the period of the information.”

    The ACB director general stressed that the bureau’s concern as per its mandate is not just whether one received gifts from Sattar but “concern is whether in so doing one acted corruptly”, adding that “only those who acted corruptly and breached any other written law will be taken to task”.

    Chizuma, therefore, said the bureau’s mandate was to authenticate the documents that have gone viral.

    “We also would like to clearly point out that as a bureau, the documents from which the public are getting details of this car need to be authenticated and this will form part of the investigation,” she said.

    The documents linking Mkaka’s car allegedly from Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA), which we had not independently verified by press time, show that the vehicle, a Mercedes Benz 5350d L AMG, then with a registration number KT17OAO, was allegedly shipped to Malawi on June 26 2020 through Walvis Bay, Namibia.

    The same type of vehicle allegedly appeared on the list Sattar was keeping. It was valued at 22 350 British pounds which is about K28 million at the current exchange rate.

    The UK-based Sattar, arrested by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), stands accused of corrupting government officials in exchange for multiple government contracts.

    The car linked to Mkaka is said to have been cleared by MRA on August 21 2020.

  • Backslidden Lazarus’s duplicity

    Backslidden Lazarus’s duplicity

    President Lazarus Chakwera has gone the way of those who occupied that office before him. The indictment against him, however, is more severe for several good reasons.

    Firstly, as a believing pastor, we took it for granted he would be more discerning and, crudely put, more sensible than his predecessors. He has been anything but.

    Secondly, he, of all people, should know better as to what happens to leaders who grow arrogant and tone deaf. He himself led the assaults on President Arthur Peter Mutharika in parliament with his fiery speeches. He accused APM of the very things he now is flagrantly engaged in. It didn’t end all too well for APM, did it, who has reinvented and reimagined himself as a social media star who produces the occasional video of him enjoying the good time with his wife, if at all.

    Thirdly, the amount of goodwill with which Lazarus swept into office was staggering. Equally staggering, if not more intense, has been the speed and recklessness with which he has squandered that goodwill. APM was the absent president, showing up once in a while to mumble a few words only he and a few acolytes could understand. Joyce Banda was, well, to express it charitably, clueless. We may forgive her for, in the words of some, not being sophisticated. Bakili Muluzi was not very well educated, either; the less said about that the better. But what excuse does Lazarus have, with everything at his disposal?

    It is a shameful and terrifying descent of the man of God. He once told us God told him to pastor the nation. Abusa, ask yourself in your heart: are you pastoring the nation? Like a backslidden Christian, his duplicity is now visible for all to see.

    At first he pretended to support Martha Chizuma, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) Director General. However, events from December 2022 to date prove he is as entangled in the corruption issues as his goons who have been doing the dirty work for him.

    Now like the believer who has been hiding his sins, he is no longer ashamed and has arrived at that backslidden stage where instead of repenting, you start justifying or explaining your sins, such as declaring that the interdiction of the ACB DG is according to the law. Which law, abusa?

    Unless he changes course radically and urgently, the future of Lazarus Chakwera is plain for all to see. We don’t even need Prophet Austin Liabunya to put on one of his shiny suits and pointed shoes and tell us in a ‘prophetic’ YouTube broadcast that, one, Chakwera will go down in history as that one president who had all to change the course of this country but messed it up; and, two, he will lose in 2025.

    His successor will most likely jail him. All the boys and lawyers running around him and giving funny advice will definitely desert him. His pastor friends, some running their own rackets of theft and plunder, may, at best, visit him at Maula Prison with the customary ‘we are praying for you’. Not even the Lord will redeem him!