Malawi worse off than we were promised’, Catholic bishops tell President Lazarus Chakwera

The Episcopal Conference of Malawi (ECM), a grouping of Catholic bishops, has told President Lazarus Chakwera in a letter that compared to his regional peers, he failed to steer the country in the face of Covid-19, climate change, and the war in Ukraine.

This year’s pastoral letter contained similar concerns to the previous one and it expressed that “the much-touted promises of change are far from being realised”.

Chakwera has been president since June 2020, after coming into power through the Tonse Alliance, which removed Peter Mutharika after a second round of votes.

Within these two years in power, there have been growing calls for a leadership change, even from Mutharika, who is contemplating running in the 2025 elections

However, the bishops, who are deemed apolitical, carry weight.

They say that “the end result seems to be a Malawi worse off than we were promised and looked forward to in a region where most of our neighbouring countries affected by the same challenges are registering meaningful human and economic progress”.

In June, the World Bank warned that Malawi’s economic growth was expected to decline further in 2022 due to chronic fiscal and external imbalances, which have been compounded by severe weather events and the war in Ukraine.

For a turnaround in fortunes, the bishops have called on the government to be more aggressive in fighting corruption.

One of the key corruption cases in the history of Malawi is that of Malawian-born British businessman, Zuneth Sattar. Sattar is under investigation by the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency for corruption relating to three public contracts with the Malawian government.

Back in Malawi, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) believes the country’s vice-president, Saulos Chilima, has links to Sattar through an allegedly illicit contract worth about R2.5 billion.

If Chilima is investigated and prosecuted, it could lead to a political deadlock and acrimony between Chakwera and his deputy, who is also a key stakeholder in the Tonse Alliance that brought him into office.

As such, the Catholic bishops have noted that already, there is internal fighting in the Tonse Alliance, with partners focusing on possible routes to take during the 2025 general elections.

The letter reads:

Malawians voted and ushered in a new government. Malawians have regrettably observed that its way of governing is characterised by internal bickering, jostling for political clout, cronyism, nepotism and focusing on narrow selfish political interests.
Malawi has seen a smooth transfer of power as a democracy in southern Africa, but that record has not yielded positive results for the economy.