"It's shameful that the UDF party wants to take us back to the dark days,"

Mr Gwanda Chakuamba (2003)

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Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Zambia and Malawi discuss anti-graft crusades


Lusaka - Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika and his Zambian counterpart Levy Mwanawasa Tuesday discussed their respective crusades against graft which have led to political repercussions for both leaders.

Mutharika told reporters after a closed-door meeting with Mwanawasa that "corruption is a cancer which must be fought by all governments," and pledged to continue the crackdown against graft.

"We are following the footsteps of Zambia in the fight against corruption," Zambian state radio quoted Mutharika as saying.

The two presidents held private talks in Ndola, a small Zambian mining town about 400km north of the capital Lusaka.

Mwanawasa and Mutharika have both launched vigorous anti-corruption crusades that have targeted their respective predecessors Frederick Chiluba and Bakili Muluzi.


Mutharika had faced impeachment proceedings after the dragnet was widened to include his predecessor and now estranged mentor.

Malawian prosecutors have charged Muluzi with 42 counts of corruption, theft and breach of trust for allegedly siphoning off $12-million of aid funds into a private bank account between 1999 and 2004.

Former Zambian president Frederick Chiluba faces charges of stealing $507 000 in state funds.

Chiluba went on trial in December 2003 in one of Africa's most high-profile corruption cases but the proceedings became bogged down in procedural problems and the case was dropped almost a year later.

He was later re-arrested and went on trial again in November 2004, charged with stealing $488 000 in state funds.

Mwanawasa's support in northern Zambia, Chiluba's birthplace, waned after the former president went on trial. - Sapa-AFP

Saturday, August 05, 2006

International Pop Star Madonna finds a new Passion: Malawi

Mphandula, Malawi - The village headman here has never heard of Madonna, the pop star. But he knows Madonna the philanthropist.

Madonna has announced plans to raise at least $3-million (R20,4-million) for programmes to support the nearly one million children in Malawi who have lost parents to Aids. Mphandula's head man, who bears the same name as his village, said Thursday he had been contacted last month by organizers and told some of the money will build a feeding and education center for orphans in this village 50km from the capital.

"The orphanage project is about serving humanity. It will mean so much to us. We can only ask God to bless this person for her kindness," said Mphandula, who uses only one name.

Malawi is among the poorest countries in the world, hit by years of drought as well as an Aids epidemic. According to the National Aids Commission, the HIV and Aids pandemic has left close to a million orphans in this southern African country. Aids mainly affects the economically active age group of 15 to 49.

In most villages, many orphaned children being cared for either their slightly older siblings or grandparents.

"We have too many child-headed households here. We also have very old people looking after very young orphans. In both scenarios, food becomes a nightmare since the young ones cannot find enough to feed themselves and their siblings while the old ones do not have the power to look for food," Mphandula said.

A piece of land for the project has been identified but work has yet to begin.

Madonna joins a growing list of entertainer-activists who have focused on Africa. Angelina Jolie in Namibia and George Clooney in Darfur are among those who have given Africa money and, perhaps more importantly, shared with it the global attention their celebrity status draws.


Madonna outlined her plans for Malawi in an interview with Time magazine in its issue on newsstands Monday.

She was quoted as saying she plans to raise at least $3-million for programmes to support orphans in Malawi, and is giving $1-million to fund a documentary about the plight of children here. She is expected to visit in October.

She has also teamed up with developing-world economic expert Jeffrey Sachs on programs to improve the health, agriculture and economy of a village in Malawi, and she's met with former US President Bill Clinton about bringing low-cost medicines to the country.

Sachs has launched a series of comprehensive projects to transform villages in Africa, and Clinton last month announced a campaign against rural poverty in Malawi that will focus in part on combatting Aids.

Most of the farmers of Mphandula, where Madonna's orphan center is planned, live in mud-and-thatch huts, wear shoes only on special occasions and rarely can afford to eat meat.

The village has no electricity and only a few households have radios. No wonder few had heard of Madonna.

"I hear Madonna is coming here," said Michael Soko. The excited 24-year-old was the only one among 30 people interviewed in Mphandula who had heard of the Material Girl as entertainer.

"I know her song Holiday," he said. "We used to dance to it in school."

-story by Raphael Tenthani
Parliament makes history
by Andekuche D. Samalani Chanthunya, 04 August 2006 - 06:02:17

The tension that has been existing in Parliament reveals two things. The first is that our Parliament is a circus full of boring clowns. The second or perhaps most important is the absence of sensible policies.
It is the second revelation that has led to the halt of the development process in our nation. Parliamentarians remain too loyal to their leaders and political parties and in the absence of concrete policies one is only left to wonder if at all this Parliament will achieve anything in its five-year term.
In the three years so far, this Parliament has threatened to shoot down three budgets; has had more than three near punch-ups; has been prematurely adjourned more than 20 times; has rejected a Police Inspector General.
This Parliament has had chaos leading to the death of its Speaker; it has stopped or attempted to stop the implementation of the Malawi Rural Development Fund; denied giving government the access to a multi-million kwacha grant; recently rejecting several budget allocations; it has spent millions of taxpayers’ money discussing impeachment, Maybach, Section 65 etc and has seen the largest number of defections.
Parliament is made up of politicians and politics is about creating opportunities for fellow citizens, politics is about solving problems and helping those most in need. Politics is about new ideas of a country’s direction.
Politics and policy are inseparable. Unfortunately, only politics of obliteration exists in this Parliament. This renders this Parliament the most ineffective ever in Malawi. Even the one-party state Parliament, though rubber-stamping government’s policies still got things done.
Malawi seems to have come to a democratic deficit where Parliament has separated itself from policy formulation (since the parties lack policies) consequently leading to the detachment of Parliament and the common individuals who fund it.
The trouble perhaps is the lack of seriousness on the part of those in the circle. Policy statements from government or the President’s speeches are commented on by members of the civil society who only got to know of the issue through press reports; a UDF publicist who neither listened nor read the statement; an MCP spokesperson with totally no idea of the policies background.
All these interviewed and then reported by a journalist who does not understand the policy or statement in the first place. Then there is the political scientist who jumps at every opportunity for publicity ignoring the importance of research and all this gets to the ignorant man in love with political gossip. In the end, we are all losers.
The most painful thing is that MPs are doing all this at the expense of the taxpayer whom if given a choice would have spent that money wisely, perhaps in educating their children or maintaining the health of their parents in the village.
A parliament that fights 50 percent of its life and is half-empty in the remaining 50 percent is definitely not what Malawi needs at this point.
It is for this reason that many people—the hard working people who walk to Capital Hill every morning; those who spend the sunny days running for passing vehicles at Tsangano; those who cross rivers by jumping from one stone to the other; the people who work in their fields daily; the boys and girls who unfortunately go to school on an empty stomach everyday not forgetting the students who fail to do their best because they lack enough resources; the majority of these support President Bingu wa Mutharika and his government over the denial to raise salaries of MPs.
I loathe blaming education qualifications of MPs for I know many people with less or no education at all have achieved great political status the world over.
But if one votes against the budget allocation of funds to the Ministry of Information because they fear that public broadcasters—whom every now and again broadcast against them—will benefit from the funds, I fail to find any reasonable ground than lack of intellectual force behind their reasoning abilities.
What the MPs need to know is that, when the people’s turn to vote comes they will know who stood by them. Thirteen million people cannot be deprived a chance to a better life just because a few selfish individuals wish to live better themselves.