I’ve spent quite a few years documenting the rot in Malawi’s political establishment. From the brazen theft of the Cashgate scandal to the cynical plundering of the COVID19 funds that magically disappeared, I’ve never shied away from calling out corruption when I see it. Readers of this blog know this. Critics too ( of which there are quite a few), also know this even better.

But the “manufactured” outrage over Dr. Jane Ansah’s Christmas trip to Nottingham isn’t one of those scandals. Anthuni, this isn’t journalism, nor accountability. This is a pseudo witch hunt that, I suspect, has been hashed out in some pit somewhere, complete with a fake leaked document, and hurriedly dressed up as civic duty. It’s not.

And fortunately (I say fortunately, because some people can see through it), it exposes some far uglier things than anything the VP allegedly did wrong or conspired to do wrong.

The “Crime” That Wasn’t

First of all, let’s establish the real facts. The First Vice President traveled to Nottingham with five people to spend Christmas and New Year with her family. And as part of the trip she was to celebrate the birthday of her husband, on 3rd January, with reported costs for the trip of about US$97,000. The initial leaked document that talked of a budget of nearly US$1.1 million was untrue.

That’s it.

In fact, if we are to unpack what happened properly, we can also say the five members of staff she traveled with, each missed spending time with their own families, because it was part of their duties to escort the First Vice President on her trip.

Does that sound to you like a scandal of national proportions that has armchair activists frothing at the mouth?

Is that an issue seasoned and battle-hardened keyboard warriors should be vexed about?

Should we really involve our virtual weaponry on this ..?

I don’t think so.

Christmas is the biggest holiday in the Christian calendar. It is the season during which millions of people across the world, not just Malawians, scramble for transport to their home villages; when families – sometimes people who have not seen each other for months – reunite despite crushing poverty and long distances; its a time when even the humblest among us prioritizes being with the people they love. Is that not what people do during this time?

But apparently, Dr. Jane Ansah, a woman who it must be stated left her elderly husband back in Nottingham in 2024 to return to Malawi to wage the political battle whose crescendo was the toppling of Lazarus Chakwera’s hated MCP regime, apparently Jane Ansah doesn’t deserve the same grace?!

Are you people crazy?

This selective treatment is stunning. Simply incredible if you think about it, because where was this same righteous indignation when Mary Chilima, for example, the wife to the late Saulos Chilima, our beloved former Vice President, traveled with her entourage to go seek medical attention in South Africa? At a reported cost of $312,000!?

By the way, I admired the late Saulos Chilima far more than I admire Dr. Jane Ansah, and fully support the idea of Mary Chilima seeking appropriate medical attention. But we never pretended, at the time , that his security detail or that of his wife and their staff were committing some cardinal sin when they accompanied him or her, on their travels. They weren’t. That’s how government works! That’s how every government works. Every. Normal. Government.

So why are we pretending that these trips, when they do occur, don’t cost substantial resources.

Let’s be sober minded and weigh the proportionality of what just happened. The First Vice President hasn’t purchased a private jet using state resources. She has not been caught accepting some bribe from a Qatari businessman. She has just taken a trip to go see her family.

Those holier than thou critics know what protocol is. They know that Vice Presidents don’t travel alone. They can’t. Whether we like it or not, whether we approve of it or not, whether the trip is official or personal, Vice Presidents are entitled to an entourage. They are second in line to governance. The national security concerns alone demands it. And the government often foots the bill.

So why the sudden amnesia?

Why are we pretending that this is somehow unprecedented? Is it maybe because we’re still angry at Chakwera and his excesses, and have forgotten that there’s been a change of guard? Or is it because Jane Ansah is a woman?

You brood of vipers, you threw barbs at Joyce Banda, when she was Vice President, now you’ve sharpened your knives again and are throwing the same barbs at Jane Ansah? Trying yet again to tear down a successful woman who is nearing the peak of her political career? You’re are afraid of her so instead of competing fairly, you choose to tarnish her.

It is quite the behaviour for some of them – because kutonza nzimayi feels like fair game in a way that scrutinizing powerful men never quite does. I mean she hasn’t taken an entourage of 15 people like Chilima did when he went to the US in April 2022. This is just 5 people. Three Security Personnel, a Personal Assistant and a Special Advisor. Do we really honestly expect her to pay for those public officials, who are only doing their jobs, from her own pockets?

The Sacrifice We Choose to Forget

Here’s what the pitchfork brigade has conveniently ignored. Dr. Jane Ansah made sacrifices for Malawi that most of us, even if we had an opportunity, wouldn’t make. She left her elderly husband, thousands of miles away, she left her children and grandchildren – and set off to go fight a political war with uncertain odds. She helped dismantle the much-disliked Chakwera MCP machinery that had caused Malawians so much suffering. She stood in the arena when indifference would have been easier, safer, more convenient, more comfortable.

How many of these critics would do the same? How many of you would leave behind your spouses, leave behind the safety and security of your careers, and your general comfort, to go off onto some odyssey pursuing a national cause with uncertain chances of success?

Yet now, after she succeeded, and when she dares to get a bit of rest at a time when everybody goes home to rest, when she tries to spend the holidays with her family – her family for Christs sake! – we act as though she’s committed treason. C’mon guys!?

Real Scandals vs. Manufactured Outrage

I know what corruption looks like. I’ve documented it for over 12 years on this platform, and other platforms.

12 largely unrewarded years.

I called out Cashgate, where millions vanished through systematic theft and money laundering that shook our nation to its core. I have published one exposé after another, the 2018 police food rations scandal – where funds meant to feed officers were diverted into private pockets; the India tractors fiasco, the excesses of Chakwera’s & co. I’ve independently tracked the trail of fraud and suspicious payments that plagued various DPP administrations, as well as the PP and MCP administrations. You can search for them and you’ll find them. Those were real scandals. Complete with receipts. They were verifiable and rightly demanded accountability. The evidence was there for all to see how they hurt Malawians. We were right to be outraged.

But this here? No, this is not it. Palibe nkhani yeni yeni apa. There is no story here. This is purely manufactured fiction. An imagined scandal, which I suspect has been intentionally engineered to cause embarrassment and outrage. And if you are familiar with the dynamics of Malawi’s politics, and how previous Malawian Presidents and Vice Presidents have related, it’s easy to see why. Jane Ansah is a threat to some people, and they’re trying to slowly erode her credibility.

The Laziness of Modern Political Critique

When Donald Trump says something crazy, there’s mostly two types of commentary which emerges shortly after. One type of commentary is that which says ‘how can he say that, he’s an idiot! a liar! A fraud!… [ list of insults and well-rehearsed invective].’ The other type of commentary, the M.A.G.A and Fox News-type says, ‘well isn’t he such a genius for doing this ..’ and goes on to heap praise, sometimes giving contradictory, half-baked, short-sighted or downright lies why what he has said or has done is great.

But there’s a third type of commentary that’s less visible. This type looks at the issue in greater depth and detail and subjects it to proper scrutiny. This type finds out what was said, by whom, why it was said, what’s behind the statements, and puts it into context with everything else happening around at the time.

These days, this third type of intellectual inquiry is in severe short supply. And the hysteria with Jane Ansah is a good example of the failure to point out what is actually going on. Those who have lapped up this spat wholesale, have had a whole fat heap of phula splurged over their faces. They’ve been conned.

But what should disturb us all, irrespective of which narrative we believe, and beyond the criticisms themselves – is, the intellectual bankruptcy behind it. By this I mean many of these critics appear to be too lazy to do the hard work of holding government accountable. They won’t dig through budget documents. They won’t track questionable contracts. They won’t build cases, real cases based on real evidence, not fabricated documents. Instead, they latch onto anything that looks shiny, anything that looks like power. And then they attack it. Without context, without doing the necessary research, no verification, no nuance, no objectivity, no balance.

Ironically, this desperation to find something, anything to criticize is actually a backhanded compliment to the current administration. If this holiday trip is the best scandal they can conjure, what does that tell you about the lack of substantial failures within the current administration?

Jane Ansah is not yet President. Peter Mutharika is. And this obsessive scrutiny with her is premature at best, deliberately destructive at worst. And in both cases, it’s lazy.

If those critics want to be taken seriously, and if they truly believe she’s broken the law, then please by all accounts produce your evidence. File charges. Make your case in court, not in Facebook comment sections where facts go to die. Not on twitter, where the queens of vitriol live. No, go and file an official complaint.

And if they can’t do that, and they can’t, then this conversation should end as quickly as it started.

Should the VP reimburse the government if protocol wasn’t followed? Fine. Let her pay her travel expenses back. And here I’m not including the percentage for the five people who accompanied her, who are in the UK doing the jobs which are part of their employment contracts. However, whichever the case, those administrative details changes nothing about the fundamental hollowness of this sham and petty controversy.

Ultimately we deserve better politics in Malawi. I have been calling for it for years, and this episode simply demonstrates that we’re still quite far away from that destination.

Critics ought to focus on policy failures, not personal vendettas. Or on amplifying manufactured power grabs. Malawi deserves a political discourse that distinguishes between genuine corruption and an ordinary personal engagement by a public official. The people we elevate to leadership are still human, they still have families they love (wherever those families happen to be based). And so, service to country doesn’t – and shouldn’t – require complete erasure of personal life, or complete abdication of familial responsibilities. Dr. Jane Ansah has made some sacrifices for Malawi, which many of us haven’t. She has fought battles that most of us watched from the sidelines (many of us with indifference or apathy). While we were consuming news and responding to inflammatory content on our smartphones, she was on the ground actually working to help deliver the change Malawians desired and demanded. I think the least we can do is extend her some understanding; the basic dignity of spending the holiday season with her loved ones. And we can do so, without being overly-dramatic and treating it like a national crisis. It is not.

I’ll tell you one final thing.

I know Malawi has many problems, and I know people are expecting a lot from our leaders, especially this DPP government, after a long list of failures and broken promises. I fully understand that. And I agree that we should hold leaders accountable given our fractious history that’s fraught with unbelievable levels of corruption and excesses. But, as much as Jane Ansah is our VP, she’s not going to be able to cater to the trivial and petty whims of each and every entitled prima donna. I’m the first to say that.