Friday
On the surface, the news that the former President of Malawi has been arrested and charged with pocketing £5.5 million of developing aid is good news. It has been a consistent complaint of Africa-watchers for a long time that African elites have been pocketing Western aid-money, and getting away with it, while their subjects suffer and starve.
However, closer examination of this story does make me wonder.
"The former president denies all the charges, and he has invoked his constitutional right to remain silent," said Fahad Assani, Mr Muluzi's lawyer. He expressed confidence that the ex-president would be found "very, very innocent".Mr Muluzi became president after Malawi had endured 30 years of misrule from Hastings Banda.
He promised to turn Malawi, one of the world's poorest countries, into a prosperous democracy. But scandal and corruption marred Mr Muluzi's decade in power. After failing to remove term limits from the constitution, he was forced to hand over to a new president, Bingu wa Mutharika. The two men have been bitter rivals ever since. Mr Muluzi's allies claim he is being persecuted by the new president.
So I wonder, is this a genuine effort to bring a malefactor to book, or is it a case where Mr Mutharika is using the forms of modern political parlance to the very unmodern ends of getting an old rival out of the way?
Well the attempt to remove term limits is usually a sign a president is not to be trusted in general. In relation to the charges themselves, who knows?
However it is a habit of the Malawian elite to be very, very certain about everything, following the appalling Dr Banda's example:
For a while, Theroux thought he might also have been expelled from Malawi because of an English textbook he was writing. With no resources but some inappropriate grammar books from Kansas and a set of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly novels donated by the English Speaking Union in London, Theroux and a Malawian linguist had begun writing a textbook that concentrated on verb patterns and sentence structure, rather than the usual grammar punctuation of subordinating conjunctions, adjectival phrases, and dependent clauses. At some point, the textbook was shown to Hastings Banda, and in a speech before Parliament he attacked certain teachers of English, and Paul’s textbook in particular, because it contained no grammar lessons. Banda was furious, calling the book a “nonsensical linguistic approach.”- From Peace Corps Writers
And that was before he had become president-for-life.
Posted by guy herbert at July 28, 2006 07:38 AM
"In relation to the charges themselves, who knows?"
Well, I know. All African (and other) leaders are corrupt. All. Nothing new in it, no doubt at all about it.
The motive why the current president is prosecuting the former one does not matter at all. All African politicians are utterly corrupt, and all (far too rare) prosecutions are justified and well deserved.
Posted by Jacob at July 28, 2006 10:35 AM
It would be unjust and improper to have someone tried on trumped-up charges, even if they were coincidentally guilty of similar offences.
Any system where politicians and officials habitually get rich in office, or as a result of having been in office, is undesirable and leads to corruption via moral hazard. But that's not the same thing as saying any charges of corruption are always warranted.
Posted by guy herbert at July 28, 2006 10:52 AM
Hello !
I write to you just to say that it's very funny to read you from where i live : Brussels (belgium).
You have a very good website !
Thanks for that and congratulations !
Best regards.
Reno
Posted by reno at July 28, 2006 02:18 PM
Well, $5.5 million is a pittance by the standards of African government corruption. Sounds to me like they are more pissed that he accepted ONLY $5.5 million.
That said, every defendant's lawyer claims their client is "innocent". The more guilty they are, the more certain their attorney is of their innocence...
Posted by Mike Lorrey at July 29, 2006 02:25 AM
