President Banda: Corrupt President or Upright Citizen?

When Corruption orginates from the President’s office, firing the cabinet is only a distraction

In spite of numerous international accolades and goodwill, Malawi’s president Joyce Banda has returned last Wednesday to a country pulverized by stories of systematic and systemic corruption.

President Banda arrived amidst calls from critics for her to resign as the allegations of corruption have implicated almost all her senior ministers and her two sons who serve as her closest advisors. There were queries as to how civil servants and senior cabinet ministers had manipulated Malawi Government’s financial management system known as IFMIS to steal millions of taxpayer dollars.

President Banda was also questioned as to why she has failed to declare her assets as required by law ever since she ascended to the presidency after the death of Bingu wa Mutharika, her predecessor. To counter claims of corruption leveled against her and her administration, President Banda held a defiant press conference upon arrival, declaring she would not bow down to calls by various critics for her to resign. Instead, she dissolved her cabinet the very next day.

The question that Malawians ought to pursue is this: How does firing or reshuffling the cabinet root out corruption when it is the office of the president that is chief of the corrupt departments, when the president herself is implicated, and when the corruption syndicate is allegedly led by the president’s sons?

Dissolving the cabinet may be a smooth public relations gimmick for the donor community she reveres so much, but it is nothing but window dressing and Malawians must realise this. Far from the dissolution being a way of solving any problem, all it does is substantiate the fact that President Banda is aware that her administration is rotten to the core. It also illustrates how dishonest politicians and businessmen can use the Malawi government’s financial management system to shroud in secrecy transactions aimed at looting and pillaging the nation’s wealth.

Indeed, it is important to remember that the “Capital Hill Cash-Gate Scandal” (named after the seat of government), has been orchestrated in the Office of the President herself. This is a shocking case of deceit and deception by senior politicians and unscrupulous businessmen, aided by the office of the president, to rob her own citizens of millions of tax dollars. It is a glaring example of the rottenness plaguing Malawian politics, and the depths to which individuals in positions of power and authority can stoop in enabling the wholesale plundering of national wealth from some of the poorest people in the world.

This has become one of the biggest fraud cases ever recorded in the country, involving the principal accountant in Banda’s office, Frank Mwanza. According to the state-appointed Anti-Corruption Bureau, he authorised the payment of MK1 billion ($3 million) to a ghost firm, in another instance, a junior officer who earns $100 a month was found with $25,000 cash at his house during a raid by the police. Ten government employees have so far been arrested over the past two weeks for fraud in this cash-gate scandal. In September, nine senior police officers were jailed for 14 years each for fraud involving $164,000.

On September 7, 2013, Patrick Sithole, an Accounts Assistant for the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change was arrested for illegally being in possession of MK120 million (about US$310, 000), which was in different currencies. According to Malawi police, the arrest followed a tip off from Sithole’s housemaid, who had herself stolen part of the money and had been caught with it.
Following his arrest, Patrick Sithole was arraigned at the Magistrate’s court where he asked to be given bail. Lawyer Wapona Kita of Ralph, Arnold and Associates, represented him. Malawi’s current Minister of Justice, Ralph Kasambara, owns the firm of Ralph, Arnold and Associates. The said firm, and Wapona Kita, has frequently represented President Joyce Banda in various legal proceedings, and Kita is a close associate of Minister of justice Kasambara.

Because of the involvement of Kasambara’s law firm in the matter of Sithole, eyebrows were raised. What followed was the exposure of a corruption syndicate that goes all the way to Malawi’s State house and has full presidential blessing.

Investigators soon were able to establish that Patrick Sithole was only a conduit in a corruption mechanism that had been established to enrich President Joyce Banda, her top officials, and her ruling People’s Party. It was the discovery of this corruption syndicate that led to the shooting of Paul Mphwiyo, a budget director at the Ministry of Finance, and to the subsequent arrests of numerous top Capital Hill officials, all caught with millions hidden in their offices, cars and houses.

When Frank Mwanza an accountant in the Office of the President and Cabinet, and a close associate of President Banda, was arrested for having paid MK1 billion to a company called International Procurement Service, apparently for no services whatsoever, Malawi’s donors and international development partners were soon compelled to voice their concern.

In the absence of President Joyce Banda who had extended her trip to the 68th United Nations general assembly by 13 days, they called upon Malawi’s Vice President Khumbo Kachali. They asked for an explanation for the rampant corruption and an assurance that the administration was taking measures to deal with the situation. They wondered why each new day was bringing new headlines of yet another government official, either related to or a close associate of President Joyce Banda, found with millions of Kwacha in cash.

It was a scathing indictment to president Banda, coming amidst criticism that she is obsessed with international recognition and yet uninterested in domestic leadership, to the great disadvantage of ordinary Malawians.

President Joyce Banda’s public relations experts claim that these arrests following the exposure of rampant looting are a breakthrough in the fight against corruption. They insist that the system had been rotten for a long time and had simply reached its breaking point, and as evidence, they have pointed to some sporadic reports of theft in the public service such as the one that happened at the

Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) in 2006 when it was discovered upon auditing that MK480 million had been stolen there during the 2004 elections.

Yet those that defend President Banda’s administration with such arguments need to admit that for a president to come into the presidential office and sit there for almost 2 years before noticing such corruption is suspicious in itself. It needs to be pointed out that president Joyce Banda has previously served as a senior cabinet minister as well as vice president, thus she has been aware of the workings of the system which she has been a part of for years. The argument that in all that time she had no eyes with which to see corruption in the system and have a vision to overhaul it is rather disturbing.

What is even more preposterous is the fact that the president has conveniently come to this wonderful revelation only when her relative was shot in a corrupt deal involving monies that were supposed to be delivered to her. If this president takes all of two years (18 years if you put together all her time in a senior government position) to notice that things are wrong, how can she be trusted to transform a country at all when a presidential term lasts only 5 years?

It is in the wake of all these events that President Banda has decided that the solution is to have a cabinet reshuffle. President Banda’s supporters and less vigilant observers have cheered the move as one that demonstrates that the president is prepared to take the bold steps in addressing the rottenness that is polluting her administration. The truth of the matter, however, is that the President and her children are the ones that are at the heart of the corruption scandal. It is therefore foolhardy for anyone to consider that simply changing the cabinet members or re-assigning them to different ministries will solve this political debacle.

Yet critics maintain that President Banda is herself corrupt and that she has affirmed this by refusing to declare her assets in fear of having the whole nation know the true extent of her wealth. In the circumstances, it is not only shallow thinking, but downright foolish to cheer the president’s firing of her cabinet with the misguided hope that this action will stem the tide of corruption. When a thief decides to remove all other thieves from the equation, does this solve a thievery problem or it simply provides the thief even more unalloyed access to the loot?

Z Allan Ntata was previously the Special Legal Counsel to the President Bingu Wa Mutharika of the Republic of Malawi. His book, “Trappings of Power: Political Leadership in Africa” was published in November 2012. The book explores political leadership issues in Africa