Let us be clear on arrests

DPP spokesman Nicholas Dausi has always been a man of words.

Dausi was at it again this week when he described the arrests of seven DPP youth cadets as politics of handcuffs. Although the arresting authorities are clear in saying it was done in connection with the machete wielding incident in Victoria Avenue on July 19, an incident that is generally felt contributed to raising the temperature that led to the death of 20 Malawians on July 20, Dausi’s analysis is that the arrests are political.

He attributes the arrests and in particular that of DPP regional director (South) Lewis Ngalande to the speech he made in Thyolo during the rally addressed by Peter Mutharika in which the cadets leader said the current PP government is in power due to the accident of Bingu wa Mutharika’s death and not the ballot.

Well, Dausi is entitled to his opinion and considering that he was in a government whose leader clearly used arrests to silence opponents and critics, one may understand his empty outbursts.

But Dausi must not cheat us.

July 20, when 20 young men were sent to their premature deaths by government agents following the demonstrations that day, has done this nation great damage. No one in their right senses would want a repeat of the trigger-happiness and the blood-letting that occurred on that fateful day.

The only crime that those young men committed was to be among those who were protesting how this country, which once prided itself in being the warm heart of Africa, was slowly degenerating into a living nightmare through economic and governance madness that was being perpetrated by the Bingu wa Mutharika administration in which Dausi was a key member.

It is generally accepted that the pro-government thugs who sought to use force to cow Malawians into submission by displaying their thuggery in Victoria Avenue contributed to the deaths by raising the temperature in the country prior to the protests.

For a few kwachas and the promise of free booze, they rained a culture of mayhem and intimidation on hapless Malawians.

The culture of impunity continued even after July 20 when those hoodlums and hired guns threw Molotov cocktails into the homes and offices of the critics of government and unexplained deaths such as that of fourth year Polytechnic student Robert Chasowa who died on September 24 under mysterious circumstance.

His family does not know how it came to pass that their beloved son, brother and nephew was found sprawled on cold concrete at the college campus. The people who should have given us answers—the police—were the first to tell the press that Chasowa killed himself. They even produced a fake suicide note to prove it. But a postmortem report showed that the young man was bludgeoned to death.

It took a Weekend Nation investigation to reveal that actually before his mysterious death, Chasowa had been dealing with the police high command who had gone so far as bankroll him and some associates of his to stop demonstrations slated for August 17.

Why I am saying all this? The reason is simple. Dausi and his kind in DPP can say whatever they want to say but the truth remains that they ran this country with all the impunity where laws were only meant for us, the plebeians.

The DPP youth cadets were encouraged to commit crimes even by the former president Bingu wa Mutharika during rallies in the name of protecting him as their so-called father.

Malawians were being governed by the law of the jungle. But now chickens have come home to roost. We deserve answers for the atrocities that were committed. As a country, we cannot allow some people to get away with blue murder in broad daylight.

The arrests this week are not an indictment that those seven DPP cadets are guilty or not guilty. The courts will determine that. That is what is called rule of law and all what the police did was to initiate that process.

It is not politically motivated as Dausi and DPP want us to believe. I am not for political arrests. But neither do I want those who committed crimes against Malawians, even sending some of them to their premature deaths, to go scot-free.

If that were to happen, it would encourage politicians that they can commit whatever crimes on Malawians and will get away with it and protest under the “politically-motivated” argument.

That to me would be a greater travesty of justice than anything else that Dausi and DPP can coin in their unbridled exuberance and fanaticism to impress the DPP hierarchy.

Malawians want answers as regards the role that various players played in the death of 20 hapless compatriots on July 20 as well as Robert Chasowa. This should not be confused with anything else, Mr Dausi.

You can jump into Lake Malawi with your “politics of handcuffs” arguments because no one except yourself and your DPP political masters would be impressed.

Feedback: gkasakula@nationmw.net