By Falles Kamanga
BLANTYRE-(MaraviPost)-More than 15,000 households in Area 26, Kanengo Northgate in Lilongwe remain landless, uncompensated and under constant threat of eviction more than two decades after their customary land was converted for an elite housing project linked to businessman Mahmood Azhar Chaudhry – and the central question Malawians are now asking is: why is government still entertaining him?
The disputed land, Title Number Alimaunde 26/5, is held by GM Properties Limited. Using what villagers and traditional leaders call a dubiously acquired 199-year lease, the company has threatened residents from villages under Traditional Authority Chitukula, including Kwindanguwo and Kuliyani, with eviction despite not paying compensations ordered by the court.
Villagers from Kwindanguwo and Kuliyani villages under Traditional Authority Chitukula in Lilongwe protest at the High Court over land titled to a developer before compensation was paid.
In August 2020, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) and law enforcement opened investigations into Chaudhry and some senior government officials over the acquisition.
The ACB itself labelled the acquisition “dubious.” Five years later, there has been no public update, no prosecution, and no accountability.
That inaction has left families at the mercy of a developer whose title the state itself now questions.
In November 2024, High Court Judge Howard Pemba ruled that GM Properties holds valid title, but crucially ordered that no eviction could happen before full compensation at 2024 market rates.
By June 2026, GM Properties ignored the spirit of that order and issued notices requiring residents to vacate by 4 July. When the Ministry of Lands intervened, Commissioner of Lands Muhammad Selemani made a startling admission: the ministry might have issued the developer’s title deed in breach of its own procedures, without first ensuring that compensation obligations had been met.
The ministry admits a procedural breach, why is it GM Properties that is still allowed to send sheriffs to Kwindanguwo Village, while residents of Kuliyani Village say they are still waiting for valuation and payment 18 months after judgment?
Why has Traditional Authority Chitukula’s demand for a fresh ACB investigation into how GM Properties secured title to land it did not buy been ignored?
The question of government protection becomes even more urgent when the same businessman is linked to a second scandal involving public funds.
Three companies contracted to supply materials under the Malawi Rural Electrification Programme (MAREP) Phase 9 received K1.4 billion in upfront payments in 2022 and failed to deliver, leaving rural communities without promised electricity.
Attorney General Frank Mbeta reported the firms to the ACB and is pursuing civil recovery.
Mahmood Azhar Chaudhry’s link to a company that received K523 million but allegedly failed to deliver.
One of those firms, Kumakoka Trading Limited, which pocketed over K523 million, is linked to Chaudhry.
While officially owned by Grant Kaseko, Chaudhry confessed in a sworn statement before the High Court Commercial Division in Blantyre that he had dealings with Kumakoka regarding financing of the MAREP contract. Human rights activist Joel Chiwere has called it “pure fraud” and demanded that Chaudhry be roped into the recovery case.
Why has the Attorney General’s report to the ACB not resulted in prosecution? Why is a man whose company is accused of diverting K523 million meant for the poorest Malawians still able to operate freely, while the state chases taxpayers for the same money through civil suits?
The pattern is not new. Chaudhry has faced investigations for tax evasion, money laundering, corruption and forex externalisation.
In 2026, the Supreme Court of Appeal in Zoa Tea Estates Limited vs Mahmood Chaudhry Azhar accused him of misrepresentation and suppression of material facts and of attempting to obstruct enforcement of earlier rulings.
And then there is the most brazen question of all: the diplomat who wasn’t.
For three years, Chaudhry operated from his Sunnyside residence in Blantyre with a signpost declaring it the “Pakistan Consulate”, Pakistani flags flying outside, and vehicles bearing CD – Corps Diplomatique – plates reserved for accredited diplomats.
In a 2022 letter, Secretary for Foreign Affairs Joel Immanuel Matonga clarified unequivocally that the ministry only issued Chaudhry an ID card to facilitate processes toward establishing an honorary consulate and that it conferred no diplomatic privileges or immunities. Yet he had already enjoyed them for years.
Foreign Affairs Ministry clarifies Mahmood Azhar Chaudhry’s diplomatic status in a 2022 letter.
It later emerged that Chaudhry holds a Malawian passport, issued in Blantyre in 2009, identifying him as a Malawian citizen born in Gujrat, Pakistan.
How does a Malawian citizen successfully impersonate a Pakistani diplomat in Malawi, import vehicles under diplomatic concessions, fly a foreign flag, and only get disowned after lawyers wrote to the Ministry during a court case?
Mahmood Azhar Chaudhry’s Malawian passport. How did a Malawian become a self-styled Pakistani diplomat?
Governance analyst Thomas Cham’dimba says impersonating a diplomat constitutes offences under Penal Code Chapter 7:01.
This publication recently reportedly that DPP Fostino Maele is reportedly considering charges of perjury and false information. Two years later, where are those charges?
For the 15,000 families of Area 26 facing homelessness, for the rural Malawians still in darkness after K1.4 billion vanished, and for a country whose diplomatic system was abused, the issue is no longer just Mahmood Azhar Chaudhry.
The issue is the Government of Malawi itself. Why does it continue to entertain a man whose land deal was called dubious by its own anti-graft body?
Why does it allow him to hold its own citizens to ransom over land compensation it admits may have been irregularly titled?
Why does it allow public funds for electrification to disappear without criminal accountability? And why does it allow impersonation of a foreign state to go unpunished?
Until those questions are answered, the Kanengo families will remain squatters on their ancestral land, MAREP materials will remain undelivered, and the message to Malawians will be clear: in Malawi, impunity has a name, and the state knows it.
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