Are you thinking what I am thinking?
What can K61 billion buy? It can, at the current funding rate, fund Mzuzu University for 10 years. K61 billion can fund tripartite elections. This is the kind of money one can buy 20 presidential jets and has some little bit of change. I could also say that regardless of where you live in Malawi, K61 billion is more than enough to allow the owner of such monies buy your whole location or township. For instance, if you live in Bangwe in Blantyre, someone with K61 billion can buy the whole of the township and still have some change. As we know, this is the kind of wealth that our former president is reported to have stashed.
It is interesting that former president Bingu was Mutharika reported that he was worth K150 million when he entered the presidency. The forms were completed and people received the documents and it was done. Whether Bingu really owned so much wealth is not clear to me. What is clear was that he was perhaps among the most humble people in this country.
People who knew him around 2002 to 2004 report of a man who survived on relatives’ generosity and one minibus business. Nothing wrong with having a minibus. But the story also says that the former president was the conductor. Nothing wrong with being a minibus conductor, but if you are worth K150 million, driving or being a minibus conductor is perhaps not the usual thing you would be doing. By the way, my father owned minibuses at some point and this business was particularly valuable to my parents.
I do not always agree with what people say on President Joyce Banda. I believe the President in trying although it would help if she was more focused than she has sometimes or many times been. But I agree with John Kapito who says what happened to Bingu as he accumulated much wealth, could be happening now. Why? Yes, because while I have no evidence to suggest that President Banda is stashing her own billions, the legal and administrative framework that allowed Bingu to be so wealthy has not changed.
We still have a State House vote that is not under anyone’s review. We still have business deals that a president continues to strike with the potential for kickbacks. Malawians are dying for development. But what that means is the tendency where a president goes to China, meets with business people and then announces that such and such a company will be coming to do such and such business in this country. It is the same country where some billion or so was in Muluzi’s account in Zomba and yet we did not hear that the Financial Intelligence Unit or the Reserve Bank of Malawi was involved.
Bingu built Ndata while we watched. It is clear this white castle cost billions of kwacha. Nobody cared to note which hardware store he was buying the iron and all the supplies. We understood the president was entitled to duty-free buying so who cared?
