Malawi’s former president Bakili Muluzi was arrested on Thursday on fraud and corruption charges amid questions about millions of dollars in donor funds that allegedly ended up in his personal account. A team from the state Anti-Corruption Bureau took Muluzi to their office in the commercial capital, Blantyre, for over an hour of questioning before releasing him, his lawyers said.
Malawi on Monday launched a week-long HIV testing campaign amid fears the fight against Aids is being hampered by people not knowing whether they have the virus. The campaign follows the revelation that only 15% of the country’s population of 12-million people have been tested for HIV/Aids.
Veteran politician Chakufwa Chihana, who rallied opposition to the iron-fist dictatorship of the late Hastings Kamuzu Banda, died in South Africa early on Monday after an unsuccessful attempt to remove a brain tumour, the government and relatives said. He was 67. He died at about 8am at Johannesburg’s Garden City clinic.
Veteran politician Chakufwa Chihana, who rallied opposition to the iron-fist dictatorship of the late Hastings Kamuzu Banda, died in South Africa early on Monday after an unsuccessful attempt to remove a brain tumour, the government and relatives said. He was 67. He died at about 8am at Johannesburg’s Garden City clinic.
Muslims in Malawi are urging the government to ban the movie The Da Vinci Code for portraying Jesus as a married man who fathered a child, the head of a national association said on Wednesday. ”It is clear that the contents of the film are acts of blasphemy,” said Shareef Mahomed, of the Muslim Association of Malawi.
A Malawian court on Monday put Vice-President Cassim Chilumpha under house arrest for allegedly plotting to kill President Bingu wa Mutharika by hiring South African hitmen. Chilumpha will be ”confined to his official residence and will not leave his house without authority from the president” until the treason trial finishes, said high court judge Charles Mkandawire.
A mausoleum to Malawi’s founding president and one of Africa’s most repressive leaders, Kamuzu Banda, will be inaugurated on Sunday, stirring mixed emotions over the dictator’s legacy in the impoverished Southern African nation. Banda, popularly known as ”Ngwazi” or conqueror, died in South Africa in 1997 at the age of 99 and was one of Africa’s most controversial leaders.
Ten opposition leaders and businessmen detained last week in Malawi in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate President Bingu wa Mutharika have been released due to lack of evidence, police said on Monday. ”Police have not found sufficient evidence to prosecute them,” police spokesperson Willie Mwaluka told Agence France-Presse.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Thursday opened a road named after him in Malawi, accusing those who criticise his human rights record of "speaking for their white masters". Cheered on amid heavy security, Mugabe unveiled a plaque to open the newly constructed road between Malawi’s commercial capital Blantyre and the Mozambican border.
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has called for bygones to be bygones between black and white in his country, saying the two sides have to live together. The 82-year-old veteran, scheduled on Thursday to open a road named after him in Malawi, said late on Wednesday that black and white ”cannot avoid each other”.
Rights groups in Malawi on Wednesday protested against the naming of a new highway after Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, saying he does not deserve the honour because of his poor human rights record at home. The long-time Zimbabwean leader is to start a four-day state visit to Malawi on Wednesday.
Malawi’s embattled Vice-President Cassim Chilumpha was arrested on treason charges on Friday night, after a court prevented the government from firing him, his lawyer said. Chilumpha is accused of conspiring with members of his United Democratic Front party to topple President Bingu wa Mutharika’s government.
Africa needs the capacity and donor aid to react swiftly to deal with a potentially large-scale outbreak of bird flu, a conference of experts from 19 African countries heard on Monday. ”Africa needs a rapid response to the disease and must draw up practical measures to control and prevent the disease,” Malawi’s Agriculture Minister, Uladi Mussa, said on the opening day of the conference in the capital, Lilongwe.
Malawi’s forests are vanishing, victims of the world’s taste for cigarettes and the eternal search by local people for wood for cooking and heating. The small country holds Southern Africa’s melancholy record for deforestation: 2,8% of the forest cover vanishes each year, experts say.
The Malawi government is seeking details about a fire that left 12 dead, mostly migrant workers from Malawi, in the inner city of Johannesburg early on Wednesday, said a senior official. Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Relations Davis Katsonga confirmed that seven of the dead were Malawi nationals.
Police in the southern African country of Malawi have arrested a priest for ordering 15 women to strip while he conducted special prayers for them, a spokesperson said on Tuesday. The priest from the Bible Believers, one of several Pentecostal churches that have mushroomed in the country, was arrested in the central Salima district after one of the women filed a complaint.
About 2 000 people have lost their homes in floods that have hit central Malawi after storms in the south, a government official said on Thursday. The latest flooding came just a few days after heavy rains in the south left 6 000 homeless, destroyed crops and washed away bridges and roads.
Innat Edson didn’t think it would end this way. Last year, she was making wedding plans. Now, at just 15, she is back at her mother’s cramped, dingy house, nursing a fussing baby her former fiancé refuses to acknowledge is his. Many of Malawi’s teen mothers marry much older men who they hope can give them a better life.
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/ 10 February 2006
A Malawi court on Friday quashed a decision by President Bingu wa Mutharika to dismiss his vice-president and asked the Constitutional Court for a ruling in the political feud. Mutharika on Thursday sacked Cassim Chilumpha, accusing him of insubordination and of running a ”parallel government”.
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/ 25 January 2006
The collapse of an impeachment bid against Malawi’s President Bingu wa Mutharika has set off a flurry of resignations by opposition parliamentarians distancing themselves from the parties that had sponsored it. The United Democratic Front MP who introduced the motion in Parliament last year has quit his party to become an independent.
A Malawian opposition lawmaker said on Monday he has written to Parliament to withdraw a motion to impeach President Bingu wa Mutharika. ”Impeachment is not in the interests of Malawians … it has not been wholly accepted by Malawians,” Maxwell Milanzi, an MP of the former ruling United Democratic Front, said in a letter.
The year 2005 will go down in history as another difficult 12 months for the tiny, famine-stricken Southern African nation of Malawi. More than 4,7-million Malawians, out of a population of 12-million, are experiencing food shortages, according to official statistics. Malawi does not have enough food stocks to last until the next harvest in April 2006, aid agencies warn.
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/ 25 December 2005
Heavy storms and flooding displaced hundreds of villagers this week in two drought-stricken southern Malawi districts, officials said on Saturday. Two tributaries of the Shire River burst their banks in Nsanje, flooding five villages, District Commissioner Tobby Solomoni said.
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/ 22 December 2005
Malawian veterinary experts on Thursday said a ”heavy downpour of rains” caused thousands of migratory birds to drop dead, then to be eaten by locals, ruling out fears that bird flu may have reached the country. Malawi has not reported any cases of avian influenza.
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/ 19 December 2005
Eleven people were killed and eight injured when lightning struck a church in northern Malawi where services were being held, hospital and church leaders said on Sunday. About 40 people had gathered in the Church of Central African Presbytery in Mzimba, about 300km north of the capital Lilongwe, when lightning struck on Saturday afternoon.
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/ 16 December 2005
Malawi dispatched blood and tissue samples to neighbouring South Africa on Friday to be tested for avian influenza after thousands of migratory birds were found dead on a hill in the central Ntchisi district. Agriculture officials expressed alarm after local villagers started scooping up the dead fork-tailed drongos — known locally as namzenze — to eat earlier this week.
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/ 14 December 2005
Malawi police on Tuesday fired on a mob outside the home of a Chinese businessman rumoured to have abducted and eaten a number of boys in the southern tea-growing town of Bvumbwe. Two people were rushed to a hospital after they were shot in the melee, said police spokesperson Willy Mwaluka.
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/ 13 December 2005
More than a year ago, Inter Press Service (IPS) profiled several of the women who had won seats in Malawi’s Parliament, something that enabled them to break new ground in the drive to make the legislature less of male-dominated forum.This month, IPS decided to catch up with some of the women again. Had their experiences in Parliament lived up to expectations — or down to apprehensions?
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/ 2 December 2005
Anglican leaders have rejected the appointment of a British reverend to head a diocese in southern Malawi over his support for gay rights, an official said on Friday. Bishops meeting in the capital Lilongwe last week found that reverend Nicholas Henderson was ”unsuitable for confirmation” as bishop of the diocese of Lake Malawi.
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/ 7 November 2005
Malawi has been hit by a food crisis after a drought last season caused its staple maize crop to fail. The maize price has shot up to 50 kwacha a kilogram (R2,50) in some areas, but for those with money it is possible to buy cheaper rationed amounts from the government. Many in the poverty-stricken country earn just a few kwacha a day and cannot afford maize.
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/ 31 October 2005
Two sisters from Napasha Village in southern Malawi wake up before the sun rises and start walking to the maize fields a few kilometres away. Along the way they stop to eat a slice of bread with the anti-retroviral medicine given them by the Malawian government.
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/ 27 October 2005
Malawian police and members of a corruption-busting unit on Thursday searched the home of former president Bakili Muluzi, who is being investigated for alleged graft, his lawyer said. ”They took a few documents,” said Dave Kanyenda, a lawyer for Muluzi, outside Muluzi’s mansion in Limbe.