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/ 13 October 2006
Pop diva Madonna left Malawi on Friday after receiving official permission to adopt a one-year-old boy from the impoverished Southern African country. Her departure brought to a climax a controversial week-long charity visit during which her aides denied earlier reports by government officials that she planned to adopt a child.
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/ 11 October 2006
Caroline Chileka has had to adapt her lifestyle to look after her four brothers and sisters following their parents’ death from HIV/Aids. The schoolgirl, who comes from the southern Mwanza province, is one of 700Â 000 youngsters in Malawi who have been left orphans by the disease which has ravaged so much of Southern Africa.
Madonna’s mission to help Malawi’s Aids orphans remained shrouded in mystery on Friday with a scheduled meeting between the pop star and a government minister failing to take place. The celebrity made a secretive visit to an orphanage near the capital, while rumours that she was to adopt a child persisted.
Pop diva Madonna arrived in Malawi on Wednesday to adopt an African child and fund an orphan centre for 1 000 children, many of whom lost parents to HIV/Aids. A fleet of cars and trucks whisked the Material Girl and her entourage to an undisclosed location soon after their private plane landed at Lilongwe.
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/ 2 September 2006
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank on Friday announced a ,9-billion debt-cancellation deal for Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries where 60% of the population lives on less than per day. ”This is a historic moment and very exciting news,” Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe said.
A Malawian opposition lawmaker who is also one of the country’s most popular singers was on Thursday sentenced to 21 months of hard labour for faking his educational qualifications. Chief resident magistrate Luke Mabowoza Gama told a packed courtroom that he found 35-year-old Lucius Banda guilty of forgery and lying.
Malawi president Bingu wa Mutharika on Thursday demanded the resignation of a top prosecutor for withdrawing corruption charges against the nation’s former president. Director of Public Prosecutions Ishmael Wadi last week unconditionally dropped all 42 counts of corruption, fraud and abuse of office filed by the Anti-Corruption Bureau against former president Bakili Muluzi.
The village headman of Mphandula, Malawi, has never heard of Madonna, the pop star. But he knows Madonna the philanthropist. Madonna has announced plans to raise at least -million for programmes to support the nearly one million children in Malawi who have lost parents to Aids.
A Malawian court on Wednesday gave a two-year jail sentence to a principal secretary earlier suspended for corruption, making him the most senior bureaucrat to be netted in a sweeping anti-graft drive. High court Judge Richard Chinangwa found Sam Safuli guilty of ”aiding and abetting the theft of public funds”.
Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika has suspended the head of the national graft-fighting agency just hours after the Southern African nation’s previous president was charged with stealing aid money. Wa Mutharika suspended Gustave Kaliwo, the head of the Anti-Corruption Bureau on ”disciplinary grounds”, a brief statement by the president’s office said.
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.