May in Malawi carries a weight that no calendar can erase. On May 14, the country pauses to celebrate the life of Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the first President and founding leader of the Malawi Congress Party.
Four days later, on May 18, the nation remembers a darker chapter: the brutal murder of four of its own leaders near Mwanza in 1983.
The proximity of these dates is not coincidence. It is a reminder of how quickly celebration can turn to mourning when power turns against its own people.
The victims are known in history as the “Mwanza Four”: Dick Matenje, Minister without Portfolio and Secretary General of the MCP; Aaron Gadama, Regional Minister for the Centre; Twaibu Sangala, Minister of Health; and David Chiwanga, MP for Chikwawa-East.
All four had been present at the Kamuzu Day celebrations just days before. They had walked in the same parade, sung the same songs, and pledged loyalty to the party and the President.
Days later, their bodies were found near Mwanza, their skulls crushed beyond recognition. The post-mortem described them as “like shells of broken eggs.”
Why were they killed? The answer lies in the politics inside the MCP in early 1983. During the March budget session, these men had spoken openly against financial mismanagement and corruption in state parastatals.
The Public Accounts Committee had just released a report exposing massive overspending and debt in institutions chaired by John Tembo, a rising figure in the party and close to Banda and Cecilia Kadzamira.
The four were also opposed to a constitutional amendment that would create a Prime Minister’s post for Tembo, seeing it as a move to consolidate power outside constitutional checks.
Their criticism was not rebellion against the state. It was an attempt to hold the party accountable from within. For that, they paid with their lives.
The evidence that emerged after 1994, including court proceedings in 1995, pointed to the MCP and Special Branch carrying out the killings under orders. MCP, Kamuzu Banda, John Tembo, MacDonald Kalemba, Augustino Leston Likaomba, Mcwilliam Lunguzi and Cecilia Kadzamira were charged with murder.
The case collapsed due to lack of evidence and procedural issues, but the public record and testimonies left little doubt about who stood to gain from their silencing.
The way the killing was handled reveals the cynicism of the regime. Owen Lupeska, then an announcer at MBC, gave a first-hand account 43 years later:
“I was Announcer on duty during the evening of 18th May, 1983. I received a phone call through MBC’s switchboard operator that the Chief of the Institution, the late Tony Kandiero was on the line. He asked me whether I had received a message from the Southern Region Police Headquarters meant to be announced on the Public Broadcasting Station. The message was about the missing of the four prominent political party officials namely; Dick Matenje, Twaibu Sangala, Aaron Gadama and David Chiwanga. The message had specific instructions regarding time and frequency of announcing / broadcasting.
My boss (Kandiero) advised me not to do the reading instead requested the Head of Programmes (Henry Chirwa) to do by having it pre-recorded. I was advised to play the recorded message once soon after the 10:00pm News Summary and have it repeated the following day soon after 6:00am.
As families of these departed patriots remembered their beloved ones, memories of that historic night shift are still fresh. Indeed 39 Years ago
OWEN LUPESKA
MCP NEVER AGAIN!”_
Lupeska’s testimony captures the mechanics of cover-up.
A state broadcaster was told to announce the men as “missing,” not murdered. The message was pre-recorded, timed, and repeated to control the narrative. The truth only emerged later, when the bodies were found and the regime could no longer hide the brutality.
The instruction to downplay and delay was not an act of statecraft. It was an act of fear—fear that the public would know how far the party was willing to go to crush dissent.
What makes May 18 so painful is that it followed May 14. The same men who had honored Kamuzu Banda on his birthday were dead four days later, killed by the system they served. That contradiction defines the tragedy. It shows that under Banda’s one-party rule, loyalty was conditional, and criticism was treason.
The MCP did not kill external enemies. It killed its own ministers, its own Secretary General, men who had built the party and the state from independence.
The phrase “MCP NEVER AGAIN!” that Lupeska ends with is not just anger. It is a warning. It warns that when a political party becomes indistinguishable from the state, and when internal debate is met with violence, democracy dies.
The Mwanza Four were not perfect men, but they died for the principle that leaders should be answerable to the people, not to a small circle of power.
Today, Malawi is a multiparty democracy. Kamuzu Day is celebrated, and the Mwanza Four are remembered in May. But memory alone is not enough.
Condemning the May 1983 killings means rejecting the culture that made them possible: the culture of impunity, of using state institutions to silence critics, of treating the party as above the law. It means ensuring that no Malawian, regardless of rank, can be disappeared and declared “missing” by a press release.
The families of Dick Matenje, Aaron Gadama, Twaibu Sangala, and David Chiwanga have carried this grief for over 40 years. Their loss is a national loss. May should not only be a month of celebrating leadership. It should be a month of reflecting on the cost of leadership without accountability.
Malawi moved forward in 1994. But moving forward does not mean forgetting.
The murder of the Mwanza Four remains a stain on the MCP and on the Banda era.
To honor the dead, we must say it plainly: what happened on 18 May 1983 was murder, carried out to eliminate internal critics. And it must never happen again
