How much was the Moses of the Bible, the brother of Aaron, worth (in assets and money) when he died in the wilderness? Pretty nothing, I would suggest. How much wealth was the modern day Moses, Bingu wa Mutharika, the brother to Peter had when he died? Well, quite a bit depending on how much information you have.
There are those people who have worked out Bingu’s wealth as about K61 billion. Then there are those who want to make us believe that he was weighing much more and the K61 billion was just the tip of the iceberg. Hearing such stories, I am reminded of the former president’s speeches when he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, this country is not poor, what are poor are its people.” This is indeed true.
A country whose president has stashed more than K61 billion can never be poor. Presidents, at least in high income countries, are not paid handsomely. They forgo many things. Presidents in this part of the world, as a contrast, are the fat cats, indulging themselves in self-enrichment.
I would like to suggest, albeit briefly, that it will not help us to demonise Bingu. Stories like see how evil he was, he wanted to establish a bank, are circulating. Is opening a bank a sin? Rich people must invest their monies. If Bingu has opened a bank, many a Malawian would have gotten employment. Some of us would have gone to borrow money from such an institution. The multiplier effect of such investment would have been much better for Malawi than the piece of real estate he is said to own on the Isle of Man. Who is living in that house? The guards and the caretakers are not Malawian, I would imagine.
Before I judge Bingu as a thief, I want to know: how does one person steal from government such huge sums of money? I agree, I am judging the deceased because no court of law has declared that the money had been stolen. But that is what many people in this country are saying. If you believe that Bingu stole the money from the Malawi Government, how did he do it? If we do not know how monies such as these can be stolen, chances are, someone is stealing the money again as we speak. Someone should be able to say: this is how presidents steal their money and so when we know the how to steal, we can know how to stop it.
This why some of us are saying that the confrontational, legalistic approach to finding what happened for Bingu to acquire such wealth will likely backfire. What we need to be done is, and I hate it that we started off by arresting Bright Msaka, we could have left Bright where he was. Then we would have asked him: Mr Bright Msaka SC, how did the president steal such money? Either Msaka knew or he did not know. But now that we arrested him first, what he will say is: what are you talking about? I don’t know a thing.
