Who keeps Malawi past presidents’ souvenirs?

Imagine walking into a museum filthy rich in Malawi political heritage. Founding president late Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda’s king size portrait and a befitting caption greets you: “A man who believed in unity, loyalty, obedience and discipline.”

Next to the portrait inside a wall glass are Kamuzu’s souvenirs – his Wilson hat, spectacles, art collection, trench coat, walking stick and classics’ books are kept there.

You walk into another room and in the background plays a video of Kamuzu’s predecessor, Bakili Muluzi captured in one of his crowd-pulling yellow rallies of his presidency. Muluzi’s profile befittingly ends with a caption reading: “Running government is serious business.”

In another room, the unmistakable sights and sounds of ‘the latter day Moses’ gone too soon late Dr Bingu wa Mutharika are clear. His dreaming in colour video clips are splashed. And the last books he read on that dark day of last April, when he died, are there.

All the above paragraphs might be imaginary but elsewhere such as here in Egypt at the Alexandria Library, less sensitive memos, letters, personal effects and souvenirs of their past presidents from Sadat, Nasser to Hosni Mubarak are stored for generations to learn from.

Students from across the road’s Alexandria University are regular visitors. But what is so striking, most are tourists drawn from far and wide. While elsewhere people queue to buy food, here visitors line up for hours on to access the library and museum.

In the triangle-shaped 11-storey facility, you find just about everything that matters in world history. Of course, Alexander the Great’s literature befittingly dominates the shelves. This is the place where he used to study and write.