The Malawi Police Service (MPS) officers are once again in the limelight, of course, for wrong reasons. In the latest saga, they are being blamed for watching hoodlums reign their terror on demonstrators. Thirty-one years after ditching the one-party system of government, it is pathetic that the MPS has refused to move with the times. MPS stinks, to say the least. But they are not the real or root cause of the problem. They are just a true outcome of what their masters fashioned them to be.
During the week, the opposition organised demonstrations in Lilongwe demanding the resignation of the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) chairperson Justice Annabel Mtalimanja, MEC chief elections officer Andrew Mpesi and National Registration Bureau (NRB) principal secretary Mphaso Sambo. Opposition parties want these public officers out of their positions for alleged failure to discharge duties and preside over the September 16, 2025 General Elections. We have previously argued that calling on Mtalimanja and Mpesi to resign because they are related or have close affiliation to former Malawi Congress Party officials is not only petty but also has no legal backing. Which law, if any, have they violated?
On the day of the protests—Wednesday—the police who were assigned to provide security turned into mere spectators as panga knife-wielding hoodlums run riot and dispersed the protestors, in the course, maiming some of them. It was a sad day for the country that the law-enforcers, who turned up to ensure peaceful demonstrations, could only watch the Mafioso do their ugly act with impunity.
In this act, the police stand condemned hook, line and sinker. They have absolutely no defence whatsoever. They are supposed to be impartial and serve everybody in and outside the government equally. They are only supposed to side with the law.
Unfortunately, that has not been the case with the MPS not only now but across all the past administrations. So, maybe the solution does not also lie in just bashing and squeezing the noose on the police who have their masters—those they report to. Where are these masters when the police play their dirty games? What do these masters do? If they don’t punish the errant police officers, most probably they are complicit. And most certainly, the police are only carrying out orders from their bosses.
If that is the case, then it means stakeholders’ anger against the police as the wrongdoers is miscued, misdirected and misaligned to the real cause of the problem. It is a case of barking the wrong tree. The remedies for the problem must, therefore, go beyond the police.
There is no question all past administrations have benefitted from a police service that is heavily compromised, a police service that ostensibly receives instructions from above to favour the ruling party. There is also no question that all past regimes have selfishly been rewarding these misdeeds among the law-enforcers, and in equal measure punishing non-compliant ones.
Examples abound. In 2019, human rights activist Billy Mayaya was severely attacked by suspected Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) cadets in Blantyre during the Jane Ansah Must Fall protests. UTM Party officials including the late Saulos Chilima were victims of numerous arson activities in 2019 and 2020 ahead of the June 23 court-sanctioned presidential elections.
To date—five years later—no one has been arrested or prosecuted for the criminal acts. There has also been no arrest in connection with alleged attacks during the same period on Human Rights Defenders Coalition chairperson Timothy Mtambo. The DPP administration denied involvement in the crimes. This meant the government could not take anyone to book for the crime. And no one took responsibility to make the assailants accountable and therefore set a precedent against the criminal activity.
The midweek event at the opposition protests in Lilongwe where thugs dispersed and injured protestors is a replay of the same old script. This script is being replayed with no abridgment because nobody cared to stop it when it was first played. Just as stakeholders previously heaped blame on the police for abdicating their mandate, the narrative is the same today. We know the culprit but we deliberately don’t want to shoot it down because we want to benefit from the same situation when we are in government. Or, we ‘forget’ that if we don’t deal with the matter while we are in power, it will come to haunt us next time when others will be where we are sitting now. The police are behaving in this shameful manner because they fear reprisals. If they don’t comply with their masters’ instructions, they will be punished.
If we want to make the police professional and serve everybody equally, that change will come not from within the MPS itself but without. The police belong to and work under the Executive arm of government. It is, therefore, the Executive that can decide how our police operate. Therefore, for the most annoying and dysfunctional manner that the police are behaving, the public should train its anger on the Executive.
