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Chihana: great soldier but failed politician
Honourable Folks, I shall remember the late Chakufwa Tom Chihana as a courageous son of Malawi whose death could have prematurely come when he openly challenged Kamuzu Banda’s dictatorial rule 1992. That gallant act fuelled the cry for multiparty democracy and respect for human rights, culminating in the overwhelming rejection of the one party dictatorship in historic referendum of 1993.
Although I voted for Bakili Muluzi in the first multiparty general elections in 1994—a vote I still regret for ushering in a government of mediocrities—it was Chihana who convinced me that proponents of the multiparty system were not just abongololo (millepedes) as Kamuzu’s cronies used to argue. Chihana as the face of change was extremely popular both in Malawi and abroad.
I’m sure Aford, which became a political party while Chihana was in custody, took advantage of Chihana’s fame and made him party president in absentia. Consequently, from Nsanje to Chitipa, Aford was the household name among the proponents of change. We all sang: Kodo, kodo, mwaikodola. Aford ikubwera konko, ikubwera ndi aChihana omwe...
But if Chihana the soldier was a monumental success, Chihana the president of Aford was a miserable failure. The party began to disintegrate almost immediately upon his release from detention and assuming direct control of its affairs. Some diehard Chihana supporters blame his failure in the 1994 presidential elections—Chihana was on third position after Muluzi and Kamuzu—on tribalism, saying people from the South and the Centre simply didn’t want a president from the North.
While there is no denying that tribalism is indeed a sad characteristic of our multiparty politics where political leaders seem contented to “balkanise” our country into regional strongholds, I would strongly deny the notion that Chihana was a mere victim. Again, I wonder if there is any other prominent member of Aford, apart from Adada Chipimpha Mughogho, who has stuck by Chihana for the entire 13 years he has been at the helm of the party.
Suffice to say, while Aford under Chihana was unquestionably the strongest party in the North, sweeping almost all the seats there in the 1994 parliamentary polls, today Chihana leaves the party extremely weak with only a single representative in the 193-seat august House.
In intra-party politics Chihana, with a well-pronounced masculine physical disposition, was best depicted by cartoonists as a goddess of political sex who jumped into bed with UDF or MCP at will. The late Mapopa Chipeta once said Chihana was changing political allies like underwear.
With Gwanda Chakuamba of MCP he nearly brought down the UDF government by directing Aford MPs to boycott Parliament or risk dismissal from the party. That boycott went on for nearly nine months! Later he ditched Chakuamba and joined Muluzi in government as Second Vice-President. Other Aford executive members including Chipeta, Mughogho and Matembo Mzunda also secured positions in a bloated Cabinet.
But before the 1999 general elections, Chihana again ditched Muluzi, revealing that there was too much corruption and inefficiency in government. He demanded that all Aford ministers should also quit and those who defied him were fired from the party.
He contested as Chakuamba’s running-mate in the 1999 general elections and lost only to ditch him later and pair with Muluzi again in government. This UDF/Aford alliance nearly brought back the life presidency as Chihana threw his weight behind Muluzi’s overtures to change the constitutional limits of presidential tenure of office to a maximum of two five-year terms.
In fact, it was an Aford MP, of all members, who moved a motion, proposing open terms of office for the president. When that failed government pushed in the third term bill which Chihana again fully supported. There were even rumours within Aford that Chihana tried to woo his MPs with brown envelops.
So, it is important that now, as the nation mourns this great soldier, that the story of Chihana be told in full, by focusing on both his achievements and failures—both of which were monumental—because Chihana is our national heritage.
More importantly, I hope the story of Chihana’s courage will be an enduring inspiration to all of us in Malawi as we continue the political and economic struggle. We shall also only be wiser if we are willing to draw lessons from Chihana’s mistakes.
May his soul rest in peace.–– Feedback: backbencher2005@yahoo.com
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