Bingu's queues of posthumous truths

  

BY JAMES CHAVULA

AS MALAWIANS  unite in mourning President Bingu wa Mutharika, the queues at the Chinese-built Parliament Building in Lilongwe seem to be a suppressed metaphor of anything between the admiration and dislike that characterised his seven-year reign.

The venue remains a notorious reminder of the unopposed passing of the authoritarian laws hatched by Bingu’s dictatorial regime. The few voices of reason that dared go against the late dictator’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) majority in the House were wiped out with no mercy.

THE QUEUES AT MALAWI PARLIAMENT

However, the long jam outside the magnificent smelting place of a catalogue of what former Justice Minister Henry Phoya dubbed “bad laws” conveys a different message if read side by side with the queues for fuel, forex, drugs and sugar which Bingu’s body bypassed on its way from Kamuzu International Airport to the State House on arrival from South Africa on Sunday.

At worst, the lines make queues for everything the late president has left in short supply—pretty much a symbol of his poor economic and political governance— look as if they were mere rehearsal for his K150 million funeral.

BINGU TAKES THIS ROAD TO MZUZU WEDNESDAY

With such bigger swarms of sombre faces paying their last respects than the motorist who used to wave him away with empty jerry cans every time his siren-singing motorcade sped by fuel  stations, one can only wait to see what happens when his body goes to Mzuzu in the Northern Region where the Reverend Levi Nyondo was unceremoniously arrested and charged with treason for reminding ministers that the then Vice-President Joyce (now president)—not Peter Mutharika—was the rightful heir to the throne in case Bingu was incapacitated, impeached or dead.

Why some mortals are allergic to mentions of death is a subject for another day, but a year is nearly a day in politics. Death is not treason. It is real, for it is bound to happen and it happens to all of us regardless of our social standings.

Bingu’s arrival in Mzuzu on Wednesday is a moment of truth not because the region was the worst hit during the July 20 2011 anti-government protests in which 19 people were shot to death by the police, but the fact that the dictator who cut a figure of immortality is taking his last stroll in the underrated “home of DPP”—and the woman who not too long ago seemed too unlikely to succeed him has already taken over the mantle.

How time flies!

Just last year, Bingu’s close aides were jostling and kneeling for a handshake from his chosen successor, Peter, as well as competing to degrade JB. 

Such was the red-carpet treatment the heir apparent got from cabinet ministers at the funeral of former Health Minister Dr Moses Chirambo that Rev Nyondo of the Livingstonia Synod of the CCAP landed himself in the ongoing trial for speaking against the blatant display of disrespect the newly crowned president was receiving from those who were supposed to be her juniors by far.

 REV NYONDO

The outspoken man-of-the-collar should be feeling vindicated that not even a DPP’s confessed conspiracy to swear in the younger Mutharika could stop the elevation of JB to the high office when it became apparent that Bingu was no more.

While the departed leader in May last year asked Nyondo’s mother church to bury the hatchet, one can only wish the case run to the very end to answer once and for all the lingering questions about the treason and sedition laws that terrorised most opposing voices during Bingu’s rule.

After all that jazz, all I can say is that only when they realise that death is a necessary end will mortal leaders stop living in denial and start respecting people’s will. I wish Bingu had realised this while he was still alive—for Nyondo’s arrest and the July 20 murders take away a significant pool of tears his service to the nation earned.