Malawi: God's Man

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The quarrel between Prime Minister H. Kamuzu Banda and his six dissident ex-Cabinet members exploded in violence last week. In the capital town of Zomba, mobs of toughs supporting Banda clashed with civil servants backing the sacked Cabinet ministers in pitched battles employing pick handles, fence rails, steel bars, and pandas (long hacking knives). At least two died, and the hospitals were jammed with injured. The Mercedes car of ex-Justice Minister Ortona Chirwa was burned by Banda men, and Chirwa himself escaped into the bush. The home of Chief Chokawi, a Banda supporter, was sacked and razed by a rebel gang.

The quarrel with the ministers had begun over their contention that Banda was assuming too much personal power. In an emergency decree last week, Banda showed how autocratic he could get. Borrowing measures from the apartheid states of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia, Banda assumed sweeping powers to restrict the movements and control the statements or actions of anyone in the country without resort to the courts.

By Banda's order the leader of the rebels, ex-Education Minister Henry Masauko Chipembere, was restricted to a four-mile radius around his home in Malindi. Four other rebel ministers have reportedly fled the country. To rally his divided nation behind him, Banda set off on a whistle-stop campaign. In a speech at Lilongwe, 130 miles northwest of Zomba, Banda declared that he would neither resign nor die to please the rebels. "I am a man of God," Banda cried. "The God of the Christians and the Moslems is going to protect me, and I am going to be in Zomba another 20 years!"