Is George Chaponda being subjected to a completely different set of rules on corruption probing? I think yes.

Introduction

There is a very good reason why law always ensures that all those answering to the charge of murder or treason in a formal court setting are represented in their cases. And this is the case even where it is obvious they actually committed the crime in question. The court as an independent arbitrator seeks to instill in the accused an understanding of acceptance of sorts that he was allowed to go through a normal, formal procedure and process of justice so deep inside him he will feel ‘satisfied’ with the court’s final verdict. Currently, two names—George Chaponda and Foster Mulumbe—have the highest probability of appearing in our countries dailies and radios. The two are at the centre of an issue the media have come to describe as ‘Maize-gate’ where they are suspected to have been indulging themselves in corruption, and that perhaps were stopped mid-way towards completion of the same. My analysis of this issue, I mean the so-called Maize-gate, has led me to a conclusion that the two are innocent, that those calling for their removal from office are merely using the issue to meet their objectives, objectives that have nothing to do with the welfare of the Malawi people. In this discussion, I will show why George Chaponda must never resign, and why the President, Peter Mutharika, must never budge to such strange demands to throw away a friend innocent and so close and trustworthy.

Justification for defending Chaponda and Mulumbe

One day in the mid-2000s, some lady told me a story I fail to reconcile to-date. It was about how one man found himself on the wrong side of the law for sexually assaulting his female students at some school in the country, when, in fact, according to this lady, he was never guilty at all of this ‘offence’. She told me that the man had a habit of hugging female students right there in class whenever they gave an answer that impressed him during a lecture. “The man would say,” the woman said, “‘Well, you’ve done it, please come in front, I should reward you,’” the said-reward being a hug. She said the man didn’t know some female students were taking offence at all that though they could never openly express themselves, perhaps out of fear the man would punish them when marking their examinations scripts. Later, when some land issue arose between that teacher and someone with some connection, and reasons were sought to ‘discipline’ him, the ‘hug issue’ surfaced (perhaps I should call it ‘hug-gate’, for in Malawi today, anything ‘suspicious’ is now being surnamed ‘gate’). Eventually, the man lost his employment. What baffled this woman wasn’t that the man lost his job in circumstances that never amounted to sexual harassment as claimed by those bullied by those in power, but that no one, not even herself, gathered courage to stand in defence of this man.

I once attended a class where a visiting Zambian lecturer, a dedicated Christian—he always opened his lessons with some prayer, in the course, literally kneeling in front, hands up, praising GOD—had a funny way of acknowledging hard-work in class. Whenever one did well in class, the man would say, “Good, if you were in Zambia, I would give you a second wife.” Apparently, the part of Zambia where he comes from practises this form of reward. Obviously, such a dedicated Christian would never in real life give such a reward, for that would run contrary to the principles of the faith he follows—Christianity. What I want to mean by this is that there are times when we have to use simple judgement skills to tell a joke from some serious stuff. In short, the name of the man erased from the payroll for harassing female students when all he was doing was to create an atmosphere of laughter with his kids was an example of the danger to which we subject our conscience when we keep quiet in moments we should have stood up for truth without considering how the world would label or judge us.

I believe that if our democracy is to progress, we shall have to learn to tell our ‘enemy’ the truth even if it’s at a telling cost on our part; at the same time, we should not feel ashamed to defend that ‘enemy’ when some, using lame excuses, gang up against him on charges flimsy and vexatious. When judgment shows issues being pursued merely intend to satisfy a select of minds and have nothing to do with public interest, but a mere struggle for power, we must never hesitate, but rise to the occasion, to defend those wrongly labelled. This, I believe, is what justice demands of us.

I am not pro-ruling Democratic Progressive Party in any way but I must confess that it is in me that every time they implement a policy with some positive impact on Malawians, I clap hands for them. At the same time, I never derelict from my duty to point a finger where they go wrong. Perhaps in this way, I resemble the man I admire politically in the country currently—John Chisi. I guess you’re laughing; well, I’m not surprised; you’re not the first one to have found this amusing. Honestly, I should be for the Malawi Congress Party if it had genuinely proved to me they were now a reformed grouping, but alas, they are the same old entity boasting of a Central Region base, following same tactics and approaches to issues as their predecessor, the one the country rejected at the 1993 Referendum—what an opportunity lost.

Discussion

First, let me briefly retell the story that has led to this storm in a tea cup, one that has come to be known as Maize-gate. At times I come to some funny conclusion, namely that this issue has come to rob Chaponda of his right as a person who should be presumed innocent until proven guilty by a competent tribunal or court. In this way, I repeat my stand that this whole issue is a struggle for power and an attempt to impress funders, and has nothing at all to do with public interest.

Well the story is that the country’s downstream agency known by the acronym ADMARC (Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation) was planning to buy maize from a number of countries including Zambia. There in Zambia, leader of United Progressive Party, Savior Chishimba, upon sniffing ‘corruption’ in the way the deal was being negotiated, et cetera, played the whistleblower, reporting the matter to that country’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC). He said something ‘corruption’ was going on in the manner the purchase contract was being either forged or performed. He wanted that country’s Chief Justice to set up a tribunal to investigate that country’s Agriculture Minister, Dora Siliya, and her counterpart in Trade and Industry, Margaret Mwanakatwe. The parties involved in the saga were or are ADMARC (from the Malawi side) and Zambia Cooperative Federation (ZCF), and in some cases, I’m not sure whether to call it an agent, middleman, party or third party, guarantor or transporter—Kaloswe Commuter and Courier Ltd. The media in Malawi, the newspapers especially, bought the story and soon it was all over. I do not think it involved any investigative journalism; it simply required innovation—casting the net wide, reading widely. The media too and the civil society, like the opposition in Zambia who wanted the Agriculture Minister condemned, demanded similar fate for George Chaponda, Malawi’s Minister of Agriculture.

Perhaps scared by the fire in the way the stories were being run in the private media, ADMARC decided to respond in equal measure—fire with fire. First, they tried to clarify things by going it the same media way, mostly using the Government boy, Malawi Broadcasting Corporation, and this they did but in a very shoddy manner, bungling it all, in the end, giving the people the picture of a guilty man running at the sight of a stationary police ambulance.

When those tactics failed, ADMARC quickly went the court way, seeking a short-time order to stop one newspaper outlet under the Times Group brand, from writing further on the issue. The boys, they are currently one of the most trusted and objective news outlet in the country, disregarded the ‘threat’ and so fed the nation with stuff upon stuff of the scandal items. It is said Government has many hands, and one hand in form of the country’s tax-collecting body, the Malawi Revenue Authority, came guns blazing, accusing Times Group of non-payment of tax. As if this was not enough, the country’s broadcasting referee—Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority or MACRA—a fella who dances and the Government pays the piper, jumped on them slam dunk on charges only they, MACRA, can explain. It was much ado about nothing, for soon the High Court was to buy none of the injunction thing, vacating it with a stroke of a pen, and MACRA’s body-busying was to be condemned as an attempt to stifle media independence in the country. And as if to assure the people of the need to guard against death of media independence, only a few days after these torments, Times Group or Blantyre Newspapers Limited received a visitor in the name of Holly Tett, new British High Commissioner to Malawi. I think the message was clear here—attack the media and risk isolation.

There were three important lessons on all this. First, that every time an entity fights the media through courts and other means deemed defensive, people’s suspicion of guilt grows. I personally stand on a principle that in Malawi the best defender of our democracy hasn’t been the courts or the legislature; it has been the media. To understand this, you just have to hear stories about MPs being paid in exchange for silence or support, and in worse cases, as consideration or prize for abandoning a party that sent them that august house. The second lesson is that where an entity fights the media on issues bordering on public interest, especially in a setting where secrecy is a creed, the benefit of doubt is always given the media. This is why it is folly for public figures to resort to action on defamation every time they feel their persons grieved or injured. Democracy where newspapers spend time fighting battles in courts won’t be what we fought for at the Referendum that June 20, 1993. Lastly, it is folly to kill the messenger because there are always times when we need the media, I mean when the tides of fortune all surge against us in the vicissitudes of times. The ruling DPP knows this last point like the back of their hand; they had relied on the same media during their sojourn in the wilderness following the sudden death of their and Malawi’s leader in April 2012.

Because the media or art in general has no room for bias, I stand here to defend Minister of Agriculture, Dr George Chaponda, and ADMARC Chief Executive Officer, Foster Mulumbe, against flying accusations that the two were indulged in corruption and so, that Chaponda must resign as Minister of Agriculture or else the President must exercise his prerogative and fire the Minister for his role in the said maize scandal, and perhaps lately, on his comments that whatever is happening against him is a manifestation of battle between North Malawi and South Malawi.

These calls for him to resign have increased to a deafening point following the revelations or findings in a Commission of Inquiry the President established in January, a body given the powers to establish exactly what had happened and make due recommendations on the same.

Of interest is that the Commission of Inquiry established that ADMARC was ‘grossly negligent’ for not negotiating a lower price under the contract with Zambia Cooperative Federation. The people have taken issue with the two on this despite the fact that Mulumbe had already explained this off by saying the demand for maize in the Southern African region necessitated that they should grab the opportunity to buy the maize at the soonest time possible or else they would lose the grain to those who were equally and desperately looking for the same for their people—kind of beggar-has-no-choice scenario. I do not think this a serious thing to necessitate all the fuss on the issue. There are times in life when demand necessitates haste or you lose the best you could have. In law of tort (negligence) or even in contract (fraud), to prove that these people were fraudulent or negligent is not as simple as people think. And, from their explanation of the issue, I have no doubt, no independent court can fault them for such negligence or fraud unless you are using a completely different yardstick to those courts normally use in cases of this nature.

The Inquiry also established that at entering the contract with ZCF, ADMARC did not inform the ADMARC Board and did not seek a specific approval from ODPP (that’s the national public procurement body) on the contract. Mulumbe explained this, saying the exigencies of the situation on the ground did not allow that they should delay. I would look at all this in this manner: If a woman fell suddenly, and I use my judgment and reasonably believes that her apparels are the cause of the sudden fall, I would not consider etiquette, and I would not shirk from removing her dress to save her life. This is the same scenario in cases involving funerals at workplaces—people go straight to arrange for food to the funeral, for coffin and other emergency issues even before alerting the top guys who believe in bureaucracy for their own ends. Many have claimed that there was no such emergency in the country to necessitate such breaching of procedures, or perhaps that the ‘emergency’ was exaggerated because Mulumbe and Chaponda wanted to steal. I don’t know how the people define emergency, but if I were Mulumbe and Chaponda, and the World Food Programme said the following in May 2016, I would do exactly what they did:

Across Southern Africa, harvests are well underway, temporarily alleviating some market pressure and allowing for food price improvements in pockets of the region as people consume for their own production. However, crop expectations remain poor following one of the driest seasons in 35 years with seasonal rainfall deficits experienced throughout the region, and particularly in central and southern Malawi. For this reason, food prices, which have remained unusually high as compared to the seasonal trend, are expected to increase again in the coming months.

To date, six countries in Southern Africa (Malawi, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland & Mozambique and parts of South Africa) have made declarations of drought-induced disasters, emergencies or alerts. According to FEWSNET (April 2016), poor households across the southeastern part of the region that were hit hard by drought this season will atypically continue to experience food consumption gaps during the post-harvest period (April—September). [WFP Malawi Relief Operation Final Situational Report, (April, 2016)], p. 1, available at www.wfp.org).

I do not believe claims that speaking of emergency was exaggerated; in fact, for me this was a kind of house-on-fire scenario that necessitated breaking in to save the desperate child from the engulfing flame of hunger.

When the DPP lost power to fate in 2012, Goodall Gondwe was so soon retained in the government of Joyce Banda as Economic Planning Minister. On January 10, 2013, Nyasa Times ran a story bearing the title “Goodall clears mist on corruption case: ‘I did the right thing for Malawi’. The story was talking about a 2004/05 fertiliser subsidy deal where it was alleged the man had meddled in the awarding of a contract to a Saudi Arabian company. The story goes on to say, “Gondwe was found by the country’s Anti-Corruption Bureau to have acted corruptly in a fertiliser deal (2005/05, sic, farming season) that cost Malawi $6.8 million.” This must have been quite a fortune, as the exchange rate in 2004/05 was not as biting as it is today.

According to the article Gondwe insisted he “had done the right thing for Malawi”.

The article quotes him again:

“It is true I have been under ACB probe for the past seven years over the awarding of contract to a Saudi Arabian company to supply fertiliser for the subsidy programme. But as you are aware, that year it was our first time as a new government and as a country to start implementing the farm input subsidy programme. . . As such, I and the Late President Bingu wa Mutharika had to make swift decisions to save the programme as it were heading for a disaster. To avoid such a disastrous scenario, I had to bypass government’s bureaucratic rules just to make sure that the programme sees the light of day.”

What Goodall is saying is that in times of emergencies, you never operate with the same ease and sense of adherence to bureaucratic rules as in time peace and plenty. This is the same line Mulumbe and Chaponda are proffering, but for whatever reason, Mulumbe’s and Chaponda’s versions are repudiated outright as blue lies, all this where Goodall’s was received as truth. Law does not and must never function with such obvious bias.

Am I saying Goodall was wrong? No, not at all. In fact, in public administration under the concept of management by results, the very one whose workshop Goodall presided over a few weeks ago when he told civil servants the truth about working in the public sector, we judge a person by results. This is referred to as management the ex post way. Get me right here, I am not saying people should break laws or flout procedures, but that it is context that justifies how a case is handled. No two cases are handled the same if their level of exigencies are different. Put simply, there are issues you can handle at a rate synonymous with pleasure and leisure, but there are issues where judgment requires breaking the door or even going through the window.

Goodall was saved by the results which stood to challenge those who were baying for his blood. No one has waited for Chaponda and Mulumbe to show the world such results, and all this where the Commission of Inquiry Report says no money had exchanged hands.

Now my question here is simple: Should we allow only Goodall Gondwe to apply management by results and not Chaponda and Mulumbe? Did Goodall Gondwe who had been investigated for seven years resign to pave way for the said investigation? Maybe he did, but if he did not, why should Chaponda’s case be treated with a different dose of justice? Do not law and justice tell us to use the same yardstick we use on one on another and on all others?

I am not saying this is a question of issues of tribes as Chaponda had suggested, no. It is a question of forgetfulness and inconsistency. Put simply, why do we forget that only four years ago Goodall had justified the same approach and we all had kept quiet, yet today, the same thing becomes an issue when it is Chaponda and Mulumbe claiming the same kind of doctrine of necessity? In law doctrine of necessity is invoked where there is great fear letting things operate normal would create a vacuum and jeopardise the status quo.

I know that some are blaming him for being regionalistic; it is true the suggestions he made were unfortunate coming from a man of his stature, but we must understand that he is a man facing many battles. Perhaps out of anger he could say that, but we have to call to duty our high faculties of reason and forgiveness to appreciate and understand that a man in his situation, in an attempt to make people understand, could say these things, though I would not believe he meant to destroy the unity we all fight to maintain and preserve in the country.

In 2008 Late Gwanda Chakuamba openly inflamed people at a rally to go out and beat up any Lhomwe person in the country, because Lhomwes were becoming ‘cheeky’ and needed some sound thrashing. But eventually as a nation we understood our man was only human and perhaps he had said it in the heat of the moment. It is the same with Late Chakufwa Chihana who once threatened to unleash the dogs of war to have his way in the same manner the fashion of the Mau Mau uprising of Kenya. We had to reason beyond all else and forgive him. I think this is what Malawi must do, to learn to forgive, talk and find a common ground, and surge forward as one people.

Chaponda says he and Mulumbe acted the way they did because they feared letting this thing move at a rate everybody wanted would lead to a chaos of untold proportion—the child crying in the engulfing flames inside the Malawi house would die. If they acted in this fear, wasn’t it something necessary for this nation? How then do we gang up and come rushing, baying for this man’s blood? I have one explanation and one explanation only—struggle for power.

There are things against which as a nation we need to be bold and speak out because democracy demands of us to. We must never fear anyone or anything, because the job to make the wheels of Malawi move lies in our oil of debate. We must never jump on people because we believe they are the people who influence politics and so kicking them out of the way would soften the scene.

And there is the issue of fire at Chaponda’s office. Some have already concluded it was all set to immolate documents of incriminating evidence. As a human being, there is always room for me to doubt, but I must caution myself to make conclusions where I have no evidence with which to so do. Until investigations are done, it is important to wait and see.

I sound like I’m joining the DPP, but I never accept to see my ‘enemy’ suffer on issues I am not sure of myself. I must never accept to see another suffer on an issue I know I have no evidence on. If I want power, it must come the normal way.

In one entry I posted on my blog (on January 22) I made it clear, the only ‘wrong’ the Commission of Inquiry would establish would be to do with ‘breach of procedures’, but we have seen Goodall did that and he was exonerated by results. If you approach this issue in this way, you would agree with me there is nothing in this issue; it is a total waste of money and energy, a detractor, a huge diversion at a time we needed to come together and debate on issues that require our immediate attention—saving our environment, building unity for development and prosperity—through work.

I also hear some people are organising demonstrations. Well, the people have a constitutional right to demonstrate, but I feel the best we can do for our country at this point should have been mobilizing the people to grow more trees, to brainstorm on how best to help those suffering as a result of heavy rains in some parts of the country. This is no time for politicking; if we want that then it should be through talking.

Only a few days after the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States, Pope Francis made the following remarks that so impressed upon my heart: “In times of crisis, we lack judgement, and that is a constant reference for me. . . That is why I always try to say: talk among yourselves, talk to one another.” What the Pontiff was saying, in short, is that when a nation is facing problems of some mind-boggling proportion the answer does not lie in taking to the streets; it lies in talking, talking amongst ourselves to arrive as solutions as a people conscious of their destiny.

I would say the same, let us talk, talk and talk until we begin to speak with the same voice as one people.

People must avoid giving Chaponda more powers by portraying him as a victim or rather turning him into a DPP martyr of sorts. This is the same danger the ruling party, the DPP, is currently curving for itself, bringing out the issue of jet sale at a time when they are embroiled in corruption suspicion over procedures in the procurement of maize in the country. The issue of jet sale is similar to Chaponda’s issue, and I believe similar too to the fertiliser issue in one major way—at the centre of decisions to follow those paths was the fear, apparent or otherwise, that public interest was in danger, and prudence necessitated ‘flouting’ of procedures to save a country tittering on the edge of destruction or death. Chaponda has described this using the analogy of a house burning inside which is a child, where, he says, you do not go about looking for a key; you simply have to go it the savage way, breaking it to rescue that little precious life inside.

It is an important principle of criminal law (and the Chaponda issue is not a criminal issue, for me it is a contract issue, or a tort issue, or administrative issue) that you must never pass a verdict of guilty unless through consensus or admission before a competent tribunal or court. By a competent tribunal it means it must be the right forum, by a particular or right type of court as provide the Laws of Malawi, and by a person or people invested with the authority to do that. It also means one not guided by undercurrent bias.

The problem with many people is that they think that the fact that Retired Chief Justice Msosa was in the Inquiry meant the Commission was a kind of court. These people (the Inquiry team) were given the mandate to establish and recommend, not to prosecute, and they were not prosecuting. In other words, their findings can be proved right or wrong, depending on the findings of the court. Put simply, recommendations are only possible indicators or leads to help objective investigations narrow the investigations to within the confines of red light. Recommendations are not, as many people believe or lead themselves to believe, a verdict of guilty.

There was no way Dr Chaponda’s ministry, i.e. Ministry of Agriculture and Water Development, as the upstream or rather oversight or line ministry under which ADMARC Chief Executive Officer, Foster Mulumbe and his troops reported, would not have a role to play in procurement of maize for the country. It is the degree of his involvement, however, that the people must assess with absolute objectivity.

The ongoing public sector reforms emphasize management by results, a form of management in which set targets are given a manager, robust reporting mechanism set in place, and the manager is judged by the results. The reporting mechanism is aimed at tracing the various stages in which the project is so as to ensure adherence to principles of financial management, et cetera. This tracing is the responsibility of the oversight ministry. To demand that a line ministry should be answerable to activities of a downstream agency is, to say the least, missing the hub of the whole concept of management by results. This does not mean that people must not follow procedures, but we must understand the need for us to balance the need for procedures and the demand of us to perform with efficiency, and efficiency incorporates in it an element of time and money, where time is money and money is time.

There is no doubt that Chaponda is Peter Mutharika’s closest ally, and some go as far as suggesting he is being groomed to take over from him after the expiry of Mutharika’s legal mandate to rule (if Mutharika is re-elected at the 2019 Presidential Polls, that is). I personally think the whole thing, I mean how the various parties have handled the maize saga, smells of some nasty struggle for power. On this, I keep asking myself whether, if this was a different person, the media and all other people calling for his neck would have handled the matter with the same passion and interest, or whether whatever has come out is enough to label Chaponda a ‘thief’; and whether this thing isn’t turning itself into a kind of serious campaign with the objective to humiliate a figure you have failed to in open space.

Conclusion

The ruling DPP has its weaknesses certainly, but this does not justify that we must throw away objectivity and independence simply because we want them go. We must do to A what we can do to B under similar facts or circumstances, otherwise our efforts are bound to be interpreted for something unpalatable. Dr Chaponda as Minister was not supposed to be grilled as though he was the commander on the ground. Dr Chaponda merely plays the oversight role; the job was in the hands of Mulumbe, who too, in my eyes, has no case to answer, being a man who was putting his life and reputation in the line for the sake of Malawians. When Goodall Gondwe was being investigated by the ACB, Late Bingu wa Mutharika never threw him out; it would be a sad thing for Peter Mutharika to throw away a friend so close simply because others allege his conduct is questionable. No money changed hands, please, let us find a better reason to crucify Chaponda.

Reference

World Food Program, WFP Malawi Relief Operation Final Situational Report, April, 2016, p. 1, available at www.wfp.org).