President Peter Mutharika has fired a warning shot at the bench. Standing in the august House of the Parliament of Malawi in Lilongwe, he did not call out any judge by name. He did not mention any case directly. But his message was sharp and unmistakable. All three branches of government, he said, must never make decisions that are against the interests of the country. They must be patriotic. Millions look up to them. Generations are watching.
That was not casual rhetoric. It was a calculated rebuke.
The timing says everything. The country is still reeling from the ruling by the Supreme Court of Appeal in the long-running battle between Finance Bank of Malawi Limited and the Reserve Bank of Malawi. A dispute that began in 2005 has only now reached a decisive turn. The Court declared the central bank’s actions unlawful and directed that damages be assessed for losses dating back two decades.
Two decades.
Malawians are not debating technicalities. They are asking a brutal, practical question: how does an appeal take twenty years? Where was the urgency? Where was the efficiency? If justice takes a generation, is it still justice?
The Judiciary has responded with a formal statement. It says no specific monetary figure has been awarded. It says damages will be assessed by the Assistant Registrar. It points to constitutional standards, procedural fairness and complex interlocutory applications. All true. All proper. But the public mood is unforgiving. Procedure does not erase delay. Legal language does not cancel out twenty years of drift.
Now the Judiciary is under fire from all quarters. The Executive has delivered a patriotic warning. The public is furious over the financial implications. And anti-corruption voices like Alexious Silombera Kammangira have gone further, alleging deep rot within sections of the bench and naming Justice Lovemore Chikopa and Attorney General Frank Mbeta in explosive claims. These are allegations, not proven findings, but their impact is undeniable. They feed a narrative that the system is not just slow — it is compromised.
This is the dangerous moment. When the President speaks of patriotism, when citizens speak of inefficiency, when activists speak of corruption, the Judiciary stands isolated in the storm. Independence is its shield. But independence alone will not calm a country that sees a twenty-year case ending in a potentially massive payout.
The message from State House was polite but piercing: decisions must serve the nation. The message from the streets is harsher: the system is broken. Between those two pressures, the bench now faces the ultimate test — not just to defend its rulings, but to restore trust.
