While in the last hour news has reached us of the arrest of Peter Mutharika’s aide Norman Chisale, who has been accused of widespread corrupt practices, there have been many complaints over the last few weeks regarding the Anti-corruption Bureau(ACB), the official body tasked with clamping down on corrupt practices in Malawi.

Malawians are dissatisfied with the pace and direction in which the ACB is taking. Many are saying that the authorities are only targeting low-level criminals, while the big fish, the high-profile politicians who have been accused of corrupt practices at one point or another, are not being pursued, or are not being pursued quick enough.

Some people have even said that if high profile criminals are not arrested then those low level people who have been arrested might as well just be released and set free because it’s not fair that only the common people are pursued when it comes to corruption.

Now while building a convincing case against someone accused of corruption can take time, I believe many of us are missing the point.

The scale and level of corruption in Malawi was so deep, so systemic, so perverse, so pervasive, so widespread and so flagrant that the ACB is unlikely to have the human resource to deal with all the complaints that are being unearthed quick enough.

What is needed instead is Citizen Power; Citizen Action, for people to get together and gather the evidence required to build a successful Anti-corruption case. This evidence can then be used by Human Rights organisations to commence Anti-corruption actions in the courts in Malawi, but where the ACB and others can then join as interested parties.

Such a tactic would ensure that no one gets away with wrongdoing, and would force the authorities to pursue people who are perceived to be untouchable, for all sorts of reasons.
Of course ideally the ACB should take the lead in commencing such prosecutions. But when that is not yet possible, in all cases involving high profile suspects, I think it falls on the people of Malawi to do something.

Mind you, it wasn’t the ACB that led the way for the Tonse Alliance Government to come into power. Instead it was Malawians who organised and created a powerful movement that exposed the widespread irregularities which led to the nullification of the 2019 elections. It was the same Malawians who demonstrated day in and day out for 10 months+, culminating in a new election that toppled the corrupt regime of Peter Mutharika.

So we should not abdicate our responsibility to our country, by expecting the impossible from the ACB. This is the same ACB that has failed to to investigate tens of corruption cases over the last 20+ years.
Thus, it is definitively up to Malawians to build convincing Anti-corruption cases against all the figures we believe, who we know or who have good reason, and evidence to believe, stole from Mother Malawi.