What the hell is APM doing with BJ?

Let’s talk about Brown Mpinganjira, that cunning, calculating yet not-so successful politician who, since 1994, has wormed his way into presidents’ bosoms, sucked their blood dry like the leech that he is before moving on to his next victim, most of whom are either at the top echelons of State power or at the helm of political parties with strong potential to get into government.

Mpinganjira, since the early 1990s, has always fancied himself President of Malawi. He first ingratiates himself to party leaders; then brings chaos to their political groupings after which he tries to emerge as the only person who can solve the crisis they are in. From his days as Minister of Information, Broadcasting, Posts and Telecommunications in 1994 at the onset of the Bakili Muluzi administration in which he held various Cabinet-level posts, Mpinganjira has always had presidential ambitions. And the man has cat-like political lives!

It was his raw ambitions that put him on collision course with then president Bakili Muluzi who was also leading the United Democratic Front (UDF) because by the early 2000s, barely at the beginning of Muluzi’s second presidential term, Mpinganjira started showing signs that he wanted to be UDF’s torch bearer in the 2004 elections when, based on the Constitution of the Republic of Malawi, Muluzi would step down, having served his two consecutive terms.

But Muluzi had other plans—he wanted a third term, even pushed for the removal of presidential term limits, so that he could extend his rule over Malawi. By 2002, Mpinganjira was fired as a Cabinet Minister and expelled from UDF.

The then UDF regional governor for the South, Davis Kapito, said in getting rid of Mpinganjira, UDF was simply purging itself of “garbage littering its ranks”.

On his part, Mpinganjira claimed that he was being victimized for being against Muluzi’s desire to extend his rule over the country. With his eyes still on the presidential ball, Mpinganjira—with the help of other UDF prodigal sons such as Peter Chupa—formed his own party, National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

He later became its leader and torch bearer in the 2004 presidential elections that Muluzi’s hand-picked successor, Bingu wa Mutharika, narrowly won.

After miserably losing the presidential election, Mpinganjira started hunting for relevance—and survival. Rumours started circulating that he had met Muluzi with the hope of returning to UDF. He dismissed those rumours.

The next thing we heard was that he had asked the Speaker of the National Assembly to declare him an independent MP, yet he—alongside other parliamentarians in his party—went to the august House on NDA ticket.

In fact, after some discussions—during the early days when Bingu was still grateful to Muluzi who was still ‘ringing’ the bill from the carrier of the bicycle Bingu was cycling—Mpinganjira disbanded his own party, NDA, and de-registered it, much to the chagrin of his long-time ally Chupa.

He basically threw his own party and those who believed in him under the bus because it served his personal interests and joined UDF where he quickly became an executive member and its organizing secretary.

That was in 2004 before Bingu left UDF and when he did leave the party to form his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Mpinganjira was on the move as well and was positioning himself to joining DPP.

And when reports emerged that Mpinganjira was maneuvering to join DPP, DPP vice president Uladi Mussa declared that the man who killed his own NDA was not welcome in the DPP family.

Uladi justified his position by summing up Mpinganjira’s character: “Of course, I have heard that he [Mpinganjira] wants to join DPP, but he is one person we cannot trust because today he says one thing and tomorrow he says another thing,” said Mussa in June 2006.

As this was happening, Mpinganjira was playing both Muluzi and Malawi Congress Party (MCP) leader John Tembo in the run up to the 2009 elections. Mpinganjira had convinced Muluzi to make him the presidential candidate for UDF, but the cunning politician was also courting Tembo to be his running mate in the same polls. Eventually, Mpinganjira calculated that Tembo’s MCP was a better bet than Muluzi’s UDF. Not long after, both Tembo and Mpinganjira announced that they would be a pair.

UDF expelled Mpinganjira from the party for the second time. During the 2009 elections, the Tembo-Mpinganjira ticket lost miserably to Bingu. Mpinganjira even lost his parliamentary seat and went into oblivion.

Then in 2012, Bingu died, Joyce Banda and her People’s Party took over the country’s reigns and, from nowhere, out came Mpinganjira, first as Irrigation and Water Development Minister before being entrusted with the Information portfolio.

By 2014, Mpinganjira was PP Vice President (South). Then, of course, Joyce Banda and PP lost power in 2014 to Peter Mutharika.

Somehow, Mpinganjira managed to ingratiate himself to APM to the point that he is now in the DPP central committee, the party’s highest decision-making politiburo.

In fact, Mpinganjira has become what former New York City mayor  has become to US President Donald Trump: A sycophant popularizing fake election fraud claims and all manner of things.

The question is: What the hell is APM doing with Mpinganjira given how unbalanced the Mulanje Central man is?