Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Lilongwe (Agenzia Fides) - The situation remains tense in Malawi the day after the national protest held on July 20 which degenerated into accidents provoking deaths and injuries (see Fides 20/7/2001, 22/7/2011). Fr. Piergiorgio Gamba, a Monfort missionary who has been living and working for 30 years in the country, sent his testimony about the events to Fides.
"Once again history repeats itself, as what happened in 1992, when the thirty-year deadline of Hastings Kamuzu Banda’s dictatorship was reached. Times have changed and it is a new generation that appears in history. Yet it seems to retrace the footsteps of parents who had begun to demand changes after the Catholic Bishops' pastoral letter that on the first Sunday of Lent, the faithful had invited to take on the commitment to live their faith. And it was a political transfer which lasted two years, lived in a peaceful way like few others in the world.
It had been months that the protest was trying to make itself heard. Always suppressed by a government incapable of listening, it finally had a date and a specific day. When everything was ready, the night between 19 and 20 July the government was able to obtain by a judge of the High Court in Lilongwe, Chizo Mbekeani, the interdiction of the event. This became one of the causes of the protest which then degenerated into violence. Contemporaneous with the event, President Bingu wa Mutharika also offered a university lecture to explain his vision on the country's economic and political situation.
On July 20, therefore we saw two worlds that run parallel. In the great hall of the New State House, the residence built by the dictator Kamuzu Banda with Carrara marble, with all the ministers and the society around the 77-year old President, who showed all his years, especially because he proposed: a ' recycled ideology for twenty years and more ago, obtuse patriotism, total autarchy, accuses against everyone - opposition, civil society, NGOs, ... - All guilty. Phrases like: "England is no longer our mother". Phrases that would have also convinced if the economic situation had been flourishing. But in the present condition, which is unprecedented in an apparent impoverishment of the Country, only those who repeated stale platitudes would smile have smiled.
The government had everything under control: the judicial system which was to prevent the march; the police ready to punish and intimidate; the MACRA, the authority responsible for communications that until a few hours after the start of the demonstrations had ended all radio stations, interrupted internet and made phones unserviceable
The people who had gathered in the various squares of Mzuzu, Lilongwe and Blantyre was put to the test with hours and hours of waiting for the Judicial Court to allow the protest march. Hours and hours followed with denials and promises. In this stalemate it was inevitable that violence emerged from some fringes of protesters and ended up becoming the occasion of robbery, violence and ransacking. In Lilongwe there has been a persistence in robbing Chinese shops, but also African immigrants, like the Burundians, who have here a flourishing trade thanks to their initiative. The police response was very heavy. Several journalists are in the hospital, over a hundred people arrested. Violence continued till July 21, until the army replaced the police, especially in Lilongwe". (P.G/ L.M) (Agenzia Fides 07/25/2011)
