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Unjust justice for Steven Majighaheni Gondwe

 

Thirty-five years ago, Steven Majighaheni Gondwe lost everything—roughly K325 million (about $ 442 380) in property at present exchange rates—at the hands of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) dictatorship.

But when the National Compensation Tribunal (NCT) determined around the year 2001 that government should compensate him with K208 million (about $283 123) for the property seized, Gondwe only got K20 000 (about $27) from Capital Hill in 2001 out of his deserved payment.

Majighaheni Gondwe and his third wife outside their house  at Chikulamasinda in Rumphi
Majighaheni Gondwe and his third wife outside their house
at Chikulamasinda in Rumphi

Today, 15 years after that first paltry cheque and 35 years from the day the State rendered him destitute, the now impoverished and helpless Gondwe is still waiting for his full settlement. He wonders if justice exists in Malawi.

Who can blame him?

Thirty-five years ago, Gondwe was an envied multi-millionaire, respected across Malawi and beyond.

It was for good reason.

In 1981, only a handful of Malawians could boast of having property worth K1 203 600. Back then, the US dollar was fetching K2.70.

Thus, in US dollar terms, the man was worth roughly $442 000, which translates to around K325 million at today’s K730 exchange rate.

Gondwe’s estate included five heavy-duty trucks, four modern houses in Mzuzu and Rumphi, maize mills and household items such as refrigerators plus K98 000 (over $36 000 then) in cash, which is around K26 million at today’s exchange rate.

Then his world of riches crumbled around him—his wealth vanished in a flash in 1981 at the hands of Hastings Kamuzu Banda’s autocracy.

The MCP dictatorial regime seized everything and left him penniless—and a two-year jail term at various times to add to his misery—apparently for being too rich and too showy about it.

A graphic presentation of Majighaheni Gondwe in 1981 during his son’s wedding (L and C) and with his wives (R)in 2016
A graphic presentation of Majighaheni Gondwe in 1981 during his son’s wedding (L and C) and with his wives (R)in 2016

He was 47 years old at the time.

He is 82 years old today—broke and broken; a victim of the notorious Forfeiture Act and the ugly face of the one-party State which Malawians rejected in the 1993 referendum.

Special carpet noose

During an interview with The Nation last month at his base, Chikulamasinda Village, Paramount Chief Chikulamayembe in Rumphi District, the former businessperson thinks his crime could have been that he had thrown his financial weight around too much during the wedding of his son Emmanuel to Alice in 1981 at Mzuzu Teachers Training College (now Mzuzu Unive-rsity) hall.

Gondwe recalled that he had ordered so many crates of beer and soft drinks from Southern Bottlers Limited in Mzuzu for the wedding day that the supplier could hardly serve any other customer on the wedding weekend.

It is said that some people in authority interpreted this wedding day zest as ambition, in bad taste and bordering on sabotage, because people in Mzuzu were blaming government for allowing one person to monopolise the purchase of the drinks.

The famous businessperson had also hired the Army Band all the way from Zomba, and it played at the wedding.

The political schemers seem to have had a field day, as it is reported that, later, several army officers were either fired, demoted or transferred, especially over an embellished rumour that said Gondwe had walked “on a special carpet,” imitating the presidency.

Next, Gondwe was thrown behind bars—not once, but twice.

His first arrest occurred on September 21 1981—about one month after the wedding— when four senior and armed Special Branch police officers came knocking at his house in Mzuzu’s Kaning’ina suburb around midnight.

He was handcuffed, on the authority of the Preservation of Public Security Act.

“I was very shocked because their explanation that I was a security risk to government did not make sense to me,” Gondwe told The Nation after the newspaper recently traced him to his village in Rumphi to hear the stunning story from the horse’s mouth.

He said a few days later, he was an odd, handcuffed passenger on an aircraft destined for Lilongwe where he was thrown into solitary detention at Maula Prison for over a year.

Later his property was seized.

This was property he had built with his pension money, after his mining work in Zambia.

Among other business activities, he had planted maize mills in various places and used the proceeds to buy a fleet of trucks, which secured contracts with several major companies and the Malawi Army.

When he was released from detention one Friday, and even before the businessperson took in the shock of losing his fortune, the next Monday, police officers again came knocking on his door at his Rumphi village where he had retreated.

 

More cooked-up lies’

“This time, the police officers who came to arrest me alleged that I had gone on a beer-drinking spree the day before, where I insulted Kamuzu and challenged his government as one that could never tame me. All those were serious, cooked-up lies. Could a person who valued life have dared to insult Kamuzu in those days? And how could I go on a drinking spree and be that careless, soon after my release from detention?” lamented Gondwe.

He suspects authorities were trying to stop him from asking around as to who had taken over his property while he was in detention.

Nonetheless, the ex-businessperson was detained again, this time serving his near year-long incarceration at Mzuzu Prison. He was later released without any charge.

Gondwe was forced to lay low for years, for fear of attracting another long detention without trial.

But after multi-party governance was introduced in Malawi, the aggrieved businessperson finally plucked up the courage to confront the State and demand back his assets.

He later sued government for wrongful imprisonment and property grabbing.

Lawyers Mvalo and Company successfully sued government for false imprisonment of Gondwe for a total of 567 days. The complainant was compensated K750 000, which he was awarded in December 1996, in the case.

As for the property Gondwe lost, according to part of a preamble of the Lilongwe District Registry of the High Court’s Civil Cause Number 398 of 2008 between Gondwe and the Attorney General, the NCT had awarded him K208 078 308 in damages.

 

Tribunal failed Gondwe

The tribunal, arranging that the politically toxic,” Leonard states.

While in the village, the family was dealt another big blow.

Emmanuel, one of the businesspersons’ sons, was sacked from his job as a travel agent in Lilongwe.

“Two agonising years later, Emannuel found a new job and he summoned me from the village to join him in Lilongwe. I was then able to resume school in Standard Three at Chinkhuti Local Education Area [LEA] Primary School, before the brother was later transferred to Blantyre, where I attended Chilomoni LEA,” Leonard recalls.

He later went on to Chichiri Secondary School in Blantyre, where, during Form Four examinations in 1993, he chalked up a bare pass that did not earn him entry into university.

“Brother Emmanuel and in-law Alice involved me in family businesses and they looked after me very well, along with their five children. But, again, bad news followed me, for Emmanuel died in 1995 and so, too, did his wife a year later,” Leonard states.

The young man returned to Lilongwe in 1999 and struggled to secure on-job training and experience when he worked for three companies, before securing his NPL job.

“The hard and painful truth is that my father’s detention for about two years, and the authorities’ orders that all his property be forfeited, paralysed life in our family. I lament that I, and my five other brothers and sisters, could not access the quality education that our father was determined to give us,” Leonard regrets.

He observes that as he has been failing, so far, to get compensated for the property he lost, the father is worried that the curse of injustice is on him.

“It is very painful to see my father’s health now failing, as he is hypertensive [has a high-blood pressure condition] and is also diabetic. I understand his predicament and pressure in life, and we, the children, are trying our best to assist our dear father.

“But this is a man who was wealthy and has now been reduced to a beggar. He helplessly watched when my mother became ill and died; he watched two of his daughters also dying, at a time he wished he could refer the three to good hospitals. Unless he faces what seems justice, over his rightful compensation claim, I fear for my father,” Leonard says, his voice failing him and turning into an emotional quiver. n

How MP Dorothy Majighaheni Gondwe’s world collapsed

Majighaheni Gondwe’s wife the former  MP, Dorothy, walks with difficulty
Majighaheni Gondwe’s wife the former
MP, Dorothy, walks with difficulty

The joy and deep pride of having been a nominated member of Parliament (MP) for Rumphi for a year, and of being a prominent member of the Women’s League of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) for decades, came crashing down one day for Dorothy Majighaheni Gondwe, now aged 76 years.

During a five-day party convention in Zomba in September, 1981, someone pulled her aside from the convention hall, and announced darkly: “Your husband has been arrested. He is alleged to have been working against the Ngwazi.”

“I was very shocked. I knew that, if proved true, all our family members would be in hot soup, politically,” she recalled during an interview in Rumphi recently.

Gondwe’s appointment as a parliamentarian was an exclusive prerogative of MCP’s and Malawi’s founding president, Hastings Kamuzu Banda.

The Ngwazi—who was celebrated as Nkhoswe Number One (advocate for Malawian women, whom he fondly referred to as his “Mbumba)— used to appoint a dozen or so women MPs as a special honour to them and as a way of improving gender balance in the House.

Gondwe recalled that news of the arrest of her husband, a prominent businessperson based in Mzuzu, spread rapidly.

After the MCP convention in Zomba, MP Gondwe headed to Mzuzu Prison, where her polygamous husband was taken to after being nicked from his Kaning’ina residence in Mzuzu, where he was with his senior wife, Dyles.

The parliamentarian’s house was at Rumphi Boma, where the husband could also stay from time to time.

“At Mzuzu Prison, I was told my husband had been flown to Lilongwe’s Maula Prison. But when I drove to Lilongwe, I was barred from meeting my husband,” she stated.

Gondwe returned to her Rumphi Boma home and persevered by following instructions from some party cadres—that she should stay away from the ‘guilty’ husband.

She says when she attended a Budget Session of Parliament in Zomba in March, 1982; she noticed that some ministers and senior party officials were avoiding her.

She soon discovered why she was given the cold shoulder. The party’s regional chairperson for the North, one day, instructed her to resign as parliamentarian.

“I was shocked by the instruction, which, I feared, could have easily been misconstrued as spitting the Ngwazi’s grace of appointing me an MP. Instead, I suggested that I be escorted to meet the Ngwazi and apologise to him over my husband’s charges although they were not substantiated,” she recalled.

“The regional chair pressed his point, saying my failure to comply would put both him and I in deeper trouble. So, I obliged, after being coached to give ‘because of personal reasons’ as my reason for the resignation,” she added.

Gondwe said she was more shocked when she discovered that some top officials had recommended that she, too, be arrested to punish the family ‘properly’ for undermining Kamuzu.

“So, I obliged and I resigned. But I was disappointed that my move was not announced on the radio, as had been promised to me, until after several weeks. In fact, I often demanded the announcement because people kept saluting me as ‘Honourable MP’ long after this resignation,” she said.

Upon her return to Rumphi from Parliament in Zomba, immediately after she was forced to quit as MP, Gondwe found that she had been locked out of her house, with several armed policemen manning her doors.

“I could not believe my eyes that this was happening to me! The police officer in charge asked for keys to my rooms and simply did not answer any questions. He only said government had seized all the property and that we should immediately go to our village and settle there,” she stated.

Gondwe slept at a friend’s house at the Boma that fateful night after which she and her three sons headed to her home Gamphula Village, Traditional Authority Katumbi in Rumphi.

As if to rub salt into her wounds of the precipitous social fall, armed police officers called on her a few days later and demanded her to forfeit the personal vehicle she had bought on loan.

Recalls Gondwe: “I requested the policemen to strip me the privilege of the use of my car before my husband’s parents, as witnesses. So I drove in my car for the last time, as we travelled some 20 or so kilometres separating my paternal village and my husband’s. Ultimately, my sorrowful and shocked parents-in-laws witnessed my car being snatched away by the police officers that day.”

She said with no steady income, being ostracised socially and having to raise and fend for children whose lives were literally turned upside down after tasting a comfortable urban life, traumatised her.

Gondwe added: “Then we scraped the bottom of the barrel as poverty hit very hard. For some time, I was even forced to brew kachasu [an illicit distil] to find some income for the family.”

Even after her husband’s release from detention, little changed, as he was jobless and his polygamous life became a big challenge.

In her reflection, she strongly suspects that the Ngwazi was not told of her painful developments that led to her political destruction.

“I personally feel some top party officials schemed my downfall and hid the full details from the Ngwazi, who was a very caring person for his Mbumba. I reached this conclusion because when the Ngwazi appointed me, many officials were grumbling that the Majighaheni family would emerge filthy rich—what with a prominent businessperson [for a husband] and, now, an MP,” she recalled.

“I praise God that through my hard work and some assistance from special friends, things have been improving for my family. But our biggest hope is for my husband to receive the compensation we deserve for the property we lost,” added Gondwe, who no longer brews kachasu, but is now a Presbytarian church elder in her community.

Age has clearly caught up with Gondwe, as she is bent double and struggles to walk. She seems to have eye problems, as she often squints.

A close look at the former parliamentarian shows that her eyes freely ooze tears, which she wipes away surreptitiously off her cheeks from time to time.

It seems obvious that she has an eye infection. But then, what if she is actually weeping silently, after having been dealt so, so unfairly in life for decades on end? n

Son laments pain of father’s detention

Leonard: We were not allowed to attend school
Leonard: We were not allowed to attend school

All things considered, I could have been a much greater success story in life. But perhaps my overall success, in my circumstances, is that I have refused to be a bundle of bitterness and self-pity; I have emerged as a fighter and I count my blessings, from God, on a daily basis.”

Leonard Gondwe, aged 43 years, makes the loaded statement when pressed to reflect on his experiences in his chequered life.

He is an assistant packaging supervisor in the printing and packaging section of Nation Publications Limited (NPL) in Lilongwe.

He will be celebrating a year’s stint in April this year and he thinks he has found the most stable job yet, after proving to have been a rolling stone in finding his feet in the professional world.

Sharing parts of his earlier life, he says growing up as a second-born child of the then wealthy businessperson; Steven Majighaheni Gondwe in Mzuzu, life had been rosy.

He says he was close to his father, who could not hide his special pride for Leonard—as one of the sons in the male-dominated community.

But the rosy life was torpedoed in 1981 when Leonard’s mother, Dyles, stormed into his bedroom one morning and announced to the then 11-year-old son: “Let us brace ourselves, son. Your father was arrested by the police last night and things are not looking [good].”

This was after four armed Special Branch officers had picked up the influential businessperson hours earlier, handcuffing him in front of his first wife, at midnight.

She was reportedly told that he was a rebel who had been working against the one-party government.

“As a child, I did not understand how serious things were until I noticed how difficult it was for my mother and us, the children, to get permission to meet my father at Mzuzu Prison. I was shocked to see my hero and the normally sprightly father now looking downcast and almost in tears upon seeing us.

“When I went to school the next day, as a Standard Two pupil at Mzuzu Government Primary School, my elder sister and I were turned away. Word had gone around that we were a rebel’s children and we did not deserve to benefit from services offered by government, which our father had rebelled against,” Leonard recalls.

 

Then the shocking trends came thick and fast.

Next, the young man saw his worried-looking and handcuffed father leading armed police officers into his house and showing the law-enforcers his property.

After the father returned to prison, the next day, the mother and the children were evicted from the house and ordered to head to their village in Rumphi.

“Life suddenly became tough in the village, as we were not allowed to attend school. People also ostracised us, saying we were Gondwe compensation would be made in staggered tranches, paid only K20 000 to Gondwe through a cheque released in March 2001, leaving an unpaid balance of K208 058 308!

Gondwe said he was surprised that the National Compensation Tribunal and its National Compensation Fund (NCF) got dissolved “quietly and without meeting all its obligations and commitments”.

The NCF of the tribunal—set up by the Republican Constitution to process abuse of power claims against government with respect to alleged criminal and civil liability of the one party regime—had a time limit of 10 years from 1994, after which the tribunal also stood dissolved.

But despite noting that the tribunal had awarded him the K208 078 308 in compensation, in its ruling of the judicial review of his case that Gondwe had pushed at the Principal Registry of the High Court of Malawi, the court told him that he should have applied for the review no longer than three months after he was awarded the K20 000 compensation tranche in 2001.

Part of the judgement concludes: “Constitutional applications for compensation within the financial year shall be made within the first six months of the financial year. This enables the Minister of Finance to, under section 144 (8) of the Constitution, lay an appropriation to the National Compensation Fund before commencement of the next financial year.

“The scheme, therefore, is to ensure that compensation claims for the preceding year are provided for in the succeeding financial year. By that, the Auditor-General would have, under section 144 (7) of the Constitution, presented the report that assists Parliament in the appropriation.”

The judgement, delivered on October 20 2015, further dismissed, with costs, the application for judicial review.

Other avenues

However, the court, in the judgement, said: “It does not prevent the applicant proceeding by other avenues. It is just unthinkable that the applicant took all these years to apply for judicial review. It is also unthinkable that this applicant never took steps to enforce the tribunal’s award since around, or before, 2001.”

As he now considers his next move, Gondwe said he is confused that he has been made a subject of great injustice in both eras of dictatorship, then, and democracy, now.

“In the dark days of dictatorship, I feel the old government simply stole from me—big time! Up to this day, my houses are being occupied by people who acquired them dubiously over my pains and sweat, after the Forfeiture Act was used on me,” he lamented.

“But for a K208 million compensation, isn’t it a sick joke that only K20 000 was given to me? And then isn’t it obvious that this payment meant that government admitted guilt over my abuse?

“Now, why is the High Court saying I should have made a separate claim for my balance, when the court had its records and knew that I was owed in a big way? No! I feel the courts have pulled wool over my ageing eyes, just because I am not a lawyer!” he declared.

Gondwe, now a virtual recluse living in a basic two-roomed house with his third wife, Jean, in his village, conceded that he is broke.

He said he has problems fending for his family, although he stays with five grandchildren from some of his six grown-up children he bore with his three wives, before the senior one died several years ago.

“I have been reduced to wearing patched clothes these days, with the better clothes being donations from my special friends who are empathetic that I am now struggling so much in life,” he stated.

As he frequently mulls over the unfairness of life, the ex-millionaire’s new concern is his failing health. These days, he suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes.

Nonetheless, Gondwe, a Catholic, says he loves offering one consistent prayer to God. “I ask Him to let justice come my way, before I die, so that I also compensate my own children, to whom I mean to provide quality education, for them to make a mark in society,” he revealed.

 

Let justice prevail

Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) executive director Timothy Mtambo was clearly moved after he studied the issues surrounding Gondwe’s detention and compensation claim.

Said Mtambo: “This is very unfair. Government has the responsibility to promote the rule of law… On this issue, justice must eventually prevail; it is only fair for the court to review its decision and we call upon government to compensate Mr. Gondwe, in the interest of fairness and justice.”

The human rights activist noted with concern Gondwe’s comments that some high profile individuals, including some who may not have suffered as much under the one-party dictatorship, were speedily and handsomely compensated just before the tribunal was dissolved.

On his part, private practice lawyer Khumbo Soko said although the case is a sad one that has enough blame to go around, Gondwe could approach the Supreme Court of Appeal for redress.

“Our biggest problem is that we paid scanty attention to transitional justice when we moved on from the one-party dictatorship to pluralistic politics in 1994,” said Soko, who is secretary of the Malawi Law Society (MLS).

He noted: “A proper transitional justice system should ideally have been one that boldly engaged with the pain of the past and demanded a near-exhaustive accountability for the rights violations that had happened. As it happened, we did not do this. The system adopted was haphazard and rudimentary.”

Soko said in keeping with the haphazard manner in which the tribunal was set up, there was a lack of commitment to transitional justice.

He added that for the law to be impactful, the letter of the law must be accompanied by an unreserved embrace of the values it stands for.

He added: “My reading of the Constitution suggests that the obligation of the Minister of Finance to lay an appropriation for the National Compensation Fund before the National Assembly continues in so far the Fund is alive.

“The Fund is alive in so far as there is an award which remains unsatisfied. One could contend, therefore, that an actionable default occurs at least every year that the Minister of Finance fails to lay an appropriation before the National Assembly for purposes of meeting all unsatisfied awards made by the Tribunal.”

Soko said even if he suggests that Gondwe could seek redress through the Supreme Court of Appeal, he is not suggesting that people should not be vigilant in protecting their rights.

Added he: “The saying that justice delayed is justice denied would be of equal application to those who have to defend antiquated claims in court. Mr. Gondwe, himself, should have been more vigilant in pursuing his claim by approaching the courts expeditiously.” n

 

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One Comment

  1. Your exchange rate conversions are really reduculous. And you do that all the time!! Can K325M of then translate to $442,380 of today. Seriously? Mxii!

    You are a major news organization. You cannot afford to be making these stupid mistakes on a daily basis. Mxii!!

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