/ 20 February 2001

BUILDING BANDA A DECENT TOMB

FORMER Malawian dictator Kamuzu Banda will receive a “decent tomb” on Capital Hill in Lilongwe, according to a presidential statement on Monday announcing a new tomb committee. Banda ruled Malawi with an iron fist for three decades until the nation’s first multi-party elections in 1994. He died three years later. President Bakili Muluzi, who succeeded Banda in after the elections, said in the statement he had set up a seven-member committee to oversee construction of a new tomb. Banda was buried after a state funeral at Heroes’ Acre, a site set aside by the Muluzi administration for dead presidents. But Muluzi said in the statement that “very little on the construction of the tomb had taken place.” – AFP