Welcome to the democratic wonderland of Malawi, where the State broadcast machinery possesses the miraculous ability to make the country’s second-highest-ranking citizen completely invisible.
If you were relying on the State-controlled [Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC)](https://www.mbc.mw/) or the [Malawi News Agency (Mana)](https://www.manaonline.gov.mw/) last week, you would be forgiven for believing that the Office of the Vice-President had been outsourced to a ghost.
The occasion was a national women’s conference. The guest of honour was none other than Vice-President Jane Ansah, who assumed office alongside President Peter Mutharika after securing a mandate from Malawian voters. Yet, in the eyes of the the State media’s camera lenses, her seat was apparently empty. There is a beautifully tragic irony here: the conference operated under the defiant theme “Mchipululu Simofela” (You don’t die in the wilderness). It is an apt metaphor, considering the establishment seems intent on driving her into a political desert, hoping she might quietly evaporate under the scorching sun of institutional neglect.
Let us marvel at the sheer petty genius required to pull off this level of media erasure. It takes meticulous planning to send an entire State press corps to a national event, instruct them to angle their cameras away from the podium, and pretend the keynote speaker is a figment of the public’s collective imagination. This is not new, nor is it strange. It is simply the latest episode in a long-running, poorly scripted soap opera of administrative rifts. The establishment has perfected the art of the cold shoulder, elevating passive-aggressive governance to a constitutional art form.
But while the political elites play these childish games of hide-and-seek, who is actually footing the bill? Taxpayers.
Malawians are currently funding a fully operational Office of the Vice-President. Taxpayers pay for the fuel, the security detail, the policy advisers, and the stationery. They do this because they expect a return on investment. They voted for a joint ticket, electing a Number Two to perform the legal and political duties assigned by the Constitution. When State machinery deliberately sabotages the visibility and execution of those duties, it isn’t just an insult to Jane Ansah—it is a direct theft of the taxpayers’ mandate. The public is paying for a premium service but is being forced to watch a petty, State-sponsored blackout.
The message from the ruling regime’s gatekeepers is loud and clear: If we have a fallout with you, we will simply pretend you do not exist. It is a strategy ripped straight from a middle school playground, applied directly to the highest offices of State governance. Commentators are already reading between the lines of the “Wilderness” speech, viewing it as a veiled critique of the toxic political environment. And who can blame them? When the system tries to bury you in silence, speaking in metaphors becomes the only way to pierce the noise.
What the orchestrators of this media blackout fail to realise is that political wildernesses are rarely permanent. History is littered with leaders who were pushed into the bush, only to return with a sharper appetite and a leaner, meaner political machinery. You do not die in the wilderness; you adapt, you survive, and you wait out the shelf life of your detractors.
By pulling the plug on her coverage, MBC and Mana have achieved the exact opposite of their intended goal. They haven’t diminished her relevance; they have magnified it. They have turned a standard appearance at a women’s conference into a symbol of defiance. In trying to make her invisible, they have made her impossible to ignore.
The losers in this petty feud remain the ordinary citizens. Malawians did not queue in the sun to vote for an elite drama club. They voted for a functioning executive branch. It is time for the establishment to grow up, turn the State cameras back on, and stop treating the taxpayers’ money like a personal plaything for political vendettas.
