Malawi is easiest, cheapest place to own a gun - 14 cents and a letter gets you license

Fast facts:

• Over 10,000 guns legally living among Malawians
• Hundreds more being smuggled from Mozambique
• Fine for possessing illegal gun: $50
• Charge for gun license: K100
• Guns governed by old 1965 Act
• MYP and YD guns still not properly accounted for

The continuing conflict in Mozambique coupled with a porous, feebly patrolled border and weak policing are the likely reasons why guns and ammunition and gun violence keeps rocking the neighbourhoods of Malawi.

Apart from the more than 10,000 civilians who are legal carriers of guns in Malawi and apart from the locally manufactured muzzleloaders used by poachers, ‘military-type’ guns from Mozambique are proving to be the real danger.

Who among us has these?

“Our statistics show that AK47 and Pistols are popularly used in gun crime. Malawi does not license the possession and use of AK47 assault rifles both by the government or its agencies and the private sector or individuals.

“There is a consistent pattern of confessions from suspects that most of these firearms were smuggled into Malawi through Mozambique,” said Noel Kayira, Senior Assistant Police Commissioner, Deputy Commandant at Zomba Police College and, chair of the National Focal Point (NFP) on Small Arms.

The statistics are chilling; pistols and AK47s were the weapon of choice in the 151 gun crimes recorded from 2009 to 2014.

But Kayira says Malawi does not have that many criminal gangs that use firearms and that it is usually one or two criminal gangs that commit various armed violence across the country over a period of time and once arrested crime drops as was the case in Mid-2005.

Compare with Zambia, with just 14 million people, it recorded 3,168 reported cases of armed robbery in the 5 years between 1998 and 2002 and has 87,000 legal gun owners.

Some also fear that the two now-disbanded domestic political militia, the Malawi Young Pioneers (MYP) and the Young Democrats (YD) might be the source of illegal guns.

The disarmament of the MYP after the fall of Dr. Hastings Banda’s regime in 1994 is described as chaotic and incomplete), while the YD have never been disarmed and it is not publicly known what has happened to their weapons.

But Police have argued against these sources saying neither militia used AK-47s or Makarov Pistols, leaving Mozambique as the sole supplier of Malawi’s illegal guns.

With a yawning 1500 kilometer border between Malawi and Mozambique and one unhindered by geographic barriers, any gun in Mozambique can easily be in Blantyre in a matter of days.

This could be the supplier that supplied the pistol which a young Rwandan fired at a disco in Lilongwe, or the one found on a Korean in Lilongwe or the one found in the house of the Zingwangwa man that murdered his son and wife before committing suicide or even the one an MRA official in Blantyre used to kill himself. 

Andrew Charman one of the few researchers on Malawi’s gun issues linked Malawi’s firearms demand in the country to organized crime, including poaching; self-defense; and political intimidation.

The fine for having an illegal weapon is a measly $50, and the fee you pay for owning a gun is only a K100. No deterrent.

With weak background checks, some of which involve letters from the easily corruptible chiefs and pastors, some people are driven to buy guns from South Africa, smuggle them into Malawi and register them as an afterthought or not register them at all.

For Charman Organized criminal activities are closely associated with military weapons such as the AK-47, whereas demand for self-defense is largely fulfilled with South African commercial weapons.

Another source of the ‘military-type’ firearms used in gun crime is those arms belonging to the MPS and other state armed forces.

The police are on record to denying this saying incident of firearms stolen or rented from state personnel for crime purposes are ‘extremely rare’.

But evidence is available. Mangochi police had to arrest one of their own at the middle of January after he was named as aiding violent robbers terrorizing the area.

At the start of the 2016 police recovered almost 300 rounds of ammunition and guns in Blantyre, the scary thing about the bust was that the ammunition is only used in police training pointing to the rented gun theory.

Malawi can partially thank Operation Rachel, a campaign to destroy Mozambican arms caches conducted jointly by the Mozambican and the South African governments, coupled with a civil society disarmament project called Transformação das Armas em Enxadas (Turning Arms into Ploughshares) that saw many firearms taken off people, pushing prices of illegal guns in the region up.

This was seen as true in a 2003 opinion survey in Malawi that saw most respondents considering illicit firearms expensive.

Guns might thus be simply too expensive for most Malawians, some even add that criminal elements have no lucrative targets in Malawi owing to the bad shape of the economy.

Scholarship says Malawi’s lack of gun culture has also been listed as one reason the country avoids gun violence thanks to the fact that Malawi avoided a civil war in the post-independence period unlike other countries.

But this might not be for long, those that did studies on the effect of Operation Rachel warned that the success of the efforts lies in the Mozambican government curbing corruption in the security sector which might not be easy especially when coupled with the fact that conflict levels in Mozambique are currently back to high levels.

Most of the guns from Mozambique are said to come in through Dedza and Ntcheu, for example, since 2000, police in Dedza have recovered at least 4 firearms per year for six years running. Of the recovered guns, there is always an AK-47 in the fray.

Gregory Mthembu-Salter in a 2009 working paper titled Trading Life, Trading Death: The Flow of Small Arms from Mozambique to Malawi warned Malawi to not only strengthen its vigilance against Mozambican guns, but to also watch the internal environment too.

“Malawians should remain vigilant about the inflow of illegal firearms from Mozambique and, indeed, all Malawi’s neighbors.

“But they should not blind themselves to domestic firearms proliferation issues regarding either the disbanded political militia or the police and armed forces’ own weapons. Violent crime, like charity, usually begins at home,” warned Mthembu-Salter.

Kayira said Malawi’s Firearms Act of 1967 is outdated and not in line with regional and international obligations. He called for a review of the Act to make it auger well with the SADC Firearms Protocol.

Kayira - Concerned

He added that the 2012 Firearms policy and the 2013 National Action Plan on control and management of firearms and ammunition need serious implementation to curb gun trouble.

“…there is need for improved co-operation with neighbouring countries in order to address insecurity along the border areas … government should also decentralize and institutionalize the use of the Interpol I- 24/7 communication system at border entry points.

Kayira also said extradition treaties with neighbouring countries, marking of legal guns, computerized record-keeping, beefing up security of arms repositories are also important channels to explore.

“…government should where necessary, and appropriately, provide amnesty to encourage voluntary surrender of illegally held firearms. National wide public awareness campaigns should be held to encourage voluntary surrender.

“Police need to intensify border patrols to intercept criminals who smuggle guns into Malawi. The government needs to constantly provide scanning equipment at borders to detect the movement of firearms in the country,” said Kayira.

Timothy Mtambo, who heads Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation and whose organisation was actively part of the NFP said the need to check arms goes without saying.

“If ownership of arms are not controlled and regulated, crime increases which threatens investors and the violation of the right to personal security and of property let alone the right to life. That is why it is crucial for governments to regulate firearms,” said Mtambo.

NOTE: This is a 2016 production, a lot might have changed...but I did not edit anything to keep authenticity, read it with 2016 in mind. 

Kamuzu Must Die From Malawi’s History- Celebrating Him Is Satanic

By Bright Mhango

Hastings Kamuzu Banda, to some Malawians and Africans, was a statesman worthy emulating and that he has to be celebrated and given a special place in Malawi’s History. To others, like me, celebrating Kamuzu is like re-installing Adolf Hitler as Germany’s Chancellor. In this rant, I will raise reasons why Kamuzu should only be celebrated by witches.

I will start by dispelling the myth that Kamuzu was the one who fought for independence for Malawi, and that he was a good man.

When the four Young Turks; Masauko Chipembere, Dunduzu and Yatuta Chisiza, Kanyama Chiume plus Orton Chirwa launched their opposition against the 1953 Federation of Nyasaland and Rhodesia, Kamuzu was in England. He refused to come to Malawi fearing that his extended family would prey on his money even though Nyasaland had paid part of his fees for him to become a doctor in Malawi.

It was only after he was sued for impregnating his secretary, Mrs. French in England and given marching orders in Ghana for operating an abortion clinic that he came to Malawi. There was nothing patriotic about his refuguish move.

The likes of Masauko Chipembere were doing just fine, the reason they invited Kamuzu was because he was old and thus instrumental in convincing the chiefs that didn’t take the Turks seriously when they preached independence.  Chipembere and Chisiza had already made their names as daredevils and the Hansard was selling like porn because of their revolutionary statements in the white dominated Legislative Council.

It was the young Turks who paraded Kamuzu around Malawi and gave him the post of MCP president on a silver platter. The Turks are the guys that wrote his swaying speeches and did some of the translation; yes translation, because the Malawian who wrote about his tribe in America did not speak his own language.

With the Vocal Turks, Operation Sunrise soon landed Kamuzu and his three mates at Gweru Prison in Zimbabwe where they laid out plans together. When Kamuzu was released and toured the world in the name of leader, his friends languished at Kanjedza. Kamuzu delayed securing their release to make political headway, finally releasing them on the day of the MCP convention in Nkhota Kota where he was made Life president of MCP.

They chanted down the British Babylon together and soon they won independence but Kamuzu wanted all the power; keeping a firm grip on six key ministries and not respecting the Turks and friends in public. The Turks felt like the rest of the Animals in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. They fought together and the pigs wanted it all?

It was only natural that the Turks, just like they did with the ‘Bush Meeting’ that sparked Operation Sunrise, meet again - producing the Kuchawe Manifesto that ultimately sparked the Cabinet Crisis of 1964. It was not even a crisis, the ministers wanted to check Kamuzu’s unjustifiably huge powers. Naturally Kamuzu refused and a vote of no confidence was proposed against him.

 Of course Kamuzu tricked the parliament and stayed on in power, he fired the ministers and the anarchy started.

Orton Chirwa and wife Vera were rewarded with a death sentence becoming Africa’s longest serving prisoners of concise. Dunduzu Chisiza was found dead on the Zomba-Blantyre road, Yatuta was betrayed by his Greek buddy and gunned down, and Chipembere went into exile.

Of course, the court did not find any evidence to nail Kamuzu for the Mwanza murders but what did you expect? What do dictators do with evidence?

As if that is not enough, Kamuzu took a queer attitude towards people from the districts north of Nkhamenya, who for lack of a better term, I will term Northerners. The only crime these people seem to have committed was to embrace Scottish education especially as pioneered by Dr. Robert Laws at Khondowe.

What followed was the banning of ChiTumbuka from MBC and The Daily Times at the onset of the 70’s. I once spoke to Manjawira Msowoya who explained how he and his fellow Northerners were booed at MBC by workmates after the ban was announced, you should have seen the look on his face.

Studies by the likes of Noam Chomsky and Ajit Mohanty suggest that tribal children learn better in their mother tongue at basic level, this was what was going on in Malawi with ChiTumbuka being taken up to JCE level in Tumbuka areas.  Kamuzu pulled out Northern languages from the Syllabus and had all the books burnt.

Tongas and Senas had to study ‘Maliro Ndi Miyambi ya Achewa’ as if they had no funerals and customs. I know a teacher who was slapped for teaching in ChiTumbuka soon after the ban and the church elders at St. Peters Parish in Mzuzu were nearly arrested for preaching in ChiTumbuka.

Unfortunate for the North, 80% of the police stations were filled with Chewa speaking officers to partly enforce the ban and to check rebels. Even today, villagers are forced to speak in Chichewa when being interrogated or giving evidence.

To come from the North was suddenly a problem to Kamuzu; led by John Tembo late in his rule he brought on the Quota system to check the numbers of Northerners in secondary schools and colleges. Brothers and sisters had to shed ‘Northern’ names to adopt those from the Chewa speaking tribes to stand a chance.

Call it what you may but the 1980s deportation of teachers of Northern origin to the North was the most traumatising. It was not just teachers, hundreds fled across the borders and their crime was the same, being Northerners.

If not for a Mr. Jungubawa felling a tree onto the road leading to Livingstonia’s water source, a government 110 defender full of poison would have accomplished its mission. Livingstonia by then was fully behind Chakufwa Chihana’s revolutionary messages.  Of course none of you cares about that genocide attempt, but I do, I was there in Livingstonia. And thanks to the likes of November and Paul Jungubawa, that 110 Defender was evenly smashed and popularity for Chakufwa Chihana trebled.

As if that is not enough, Kamuzu made speeches calling an end to regional discrimination to ironically call for it. While he splashed millions on his pet capital city, he swore not to develop the North and called people from their ‘Rebels.’

My grandfather at Mlowe, the home of Kamplepo Kaluwa and myself, told me that the lakeshore road had to be diverted at Chiweta to pass via Phwezi and Mzuzu to avoid developing the Mlowe and Nkhatabay areas because they were the homes of some of the so called rebels, in fact the so called Northern Corridor was only sanctioned after war in Mozambique made Nacala a bad route. Why such passion at hating and for what? Being a Chirwa or a Chiume?

 I have come to be Northerner because of Kamuzu. My friends are from Lilongwe, Dowa and I from the North. I cannot speak my language elsewhere in Malawi or people will call me names. I am certainly not going to get employed in some companies because I am from the North.

Kamuzu crushed dissent like lice. Good journalism was a crime. Pollock Mhango was detained (1981) for seven years and beaten mad for writing; Mkwapatira Mhango was bombed (1989) in his house killing him, his two wives and five children. This was just after Kamuzu said that facts of his lavish official hostess were being leaked to international media by Mkwapatira and family. Maybe, you cannot feel the gravity because you are not a Mhango.

We cannot pin down what my distant grandfather, Matchipisa Munthali did to deserve 27 years behind bars, or why Atati Mpakati lost, first his fingers, to a parcel Bombing and later his life in a KGB style assassination.

People lived in fear under Kamuzu, I remember being with my grandmother, NyaChikoko when Kamuzu death was announced, she sighed and told stories of how her house was forcibly used as a guest house by MCP officials and how drunkards were clubbed to death by the Malawi Young Pioneers for behaving in a rebel manner.

Miniskirts and long hair were banned while our friends in Jamaica and USA enjoyed hair and bare thigh. Though I was young, I recall how jittery people were at the passing of a plane believed to be carrying the Ngwazi or at the chime of the national anthem. Only the rare breeds partied and gardened during public holidays. Was that not a gaol of some sort?  Smells like Taliban controlled Afghanistan to me.

Yes, you remembered the Youth Week! Good as its intentions were, the implementation was via Chinese channels and that part hurts a lot.

The saga continues

Kamuzu Banda was the only Black Person that thought Apartheid was good. When everybody was breaking ties with South Africa, he was busy strengthening trade links. Here is a guy who criticised the Federation and called for independence of Malawi.

If you are reading this from Lilongwe you should know that you are in the blood city, it was built with funding from the oppressive South Africa. In addition, Kamuzu said at the OAU that Egyptian planes that were scheduled to start bombing South Africa should not pass through Malawi.

Banda’s hypocrisy also played out in Mozambique where he supported both the oppressive Portuguese government and the rebels? How sick is that? Supporting both Renamo and Frelimo resulted into Malawians killing Malawians sometimes as they were in both fighting sides.

The Britons asked to build Bangula dam, which would have been bigger that Sudan’s Gezira Damn but using lame excuses such us the fear of Bilharzias, Kamuzu rejected the move effectively assuming responsibility of today’s blackouts.

Personal enrichment is also another noxious thing about Kamuzu, coming to Malawi as a broke sex scandalist with a medicine career begging to be banned, he died with wealth estimated at half a billion US dollars.  Why the past and current governments haven’t properly looked into his wealth is a question for all of us to ponder on.

This is the guy who clashed with Orton Chirwa on the pace of Africanisation in the 60’s, what does he produce as a solution? Kamuzu Academy. Taking 80% of the budget allocation to education to set up a school that taught Latin and Greek. Did Malawi not need a hundred MCDEs -as they were called?

The guy was a schizophrenic, its why he dubbed himself the mouthful title ‘His Excellency The Life President (Paramount Chief) Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda,’ thirteen years before his death as quoted in The Independent of UK on 27 November 1997, said “Government here means Kamuzu. Kamuzu is Malawi. So be frank when speaking about government. You know you are speaking about Kamuzu, that’s all whether you like it or not.” Is Malawi Kamuzu now?  So this is where Muluzi copied his “afune asafune” phraseology?

All I have been trying to say it that when you celebrate Kamuzu, when you let people that pioneered his policies like John Tembo and when you give respect to queer questionable women like Cecilia Kadzamira, you make some of us shiver. I was shocked to hear that Tembo is now a church elder but I know that’s typical of the church, even Pope Benedict backed gay molesting priests?

When you build grand mausoleums for dictators, adopt their names, policies and name landmarks after them, you make us remember what we are trying hard to forget. I wonder if they have a street named after Hitler in Germany.

Yes we know to many of you he is a hero, of course he is the guy that made you rich, that made your culture and language official, that gave you the ‘elite’ status among your fellow Malawians but if I am to belong to Malawi, it should be that without big brother posters looking down on me and reminding me of the Nazism that I, my kind and others have been through.