Malawi President Joyce Banda’s People’s Party (PP) should not have politicised a funeral by distributing party cloth, a Nation on Sunday survey has revealed.
The survey, which was asking people whether Traditional Authority Bvumbwe was justified to publicly rebuke the PP over party T-shirts distributed at the funeral of High Court Judge Joseph Manyungwa recently, was conducted in 13 districts.
Bvumbwe crossed paths with the PP establishment when he told Joyce Banda in the face that he was not amused by the action of some PP zealots who were distributing the party cloth at the funeral.
The remarks did not go down well with ruling party officials, whose death threats reportedly forced the chief to go into hiding.
But out of a sample of 1 198 respondents, 895 sided with Bvumbwe, saying PP was wrong to practise politics at the funeral while 273 faulted Bvumbwe, saying he should have lodged his complaint in private.
Simbarashe Mungoshi, a history lecturer at the Polytechnic, a constituent college of the University of Malawi, indicated that there is nothing wrong with criticism in a democracy.
He said the matter would have died quietly had the ruling party just let it go without trying to stage a war against Bvumbwe.
“In a democratic setting, which we claim to be, everyone, including politicians, is liable to criticism… the government made a mountain out of a mole,[the issue] would have died quietly without the reaction that ensued,” said Mungoshi
When contacted, presidential press Secretary Steven Nhlane said: “Culturally and procedurally decorum and rules of engagement with those in authority demand unequivocal respect. So, if what T/A Bvumbwe said showed him as being [disrespectful] to those in authority, then whom am I to change what tradition and decorum demands. It is not only what you say that matters but more importantly also how and where you [say] it. I notice that you are trying to resurrect an old issue. This issue is now water under the bridge,” he said.
