If the partial cabinet list released this week is anything to go by, Malawi under President Arthur Peter Mutharika is heading nowhere fast. What should have been an opportunity to rebuild public trust has turned into a shocking parade of recycled controversy. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) seems to have mistaken loyalty for integrity, appointing individuals previously accused of corruption, forgery, and abuse of office to some of the most powerful positions in government.
The list of names reads like a dark political joke. Richard Luhanga, who was recently interdicted over corruption allegations, now leads the Malawi Police Service as Inspector General. Steve Gangata, a man long associated with falsified academic credentials and graft, has been rewarded with the position of Minister of State. And Norman Chisale—whose criminal cases once filled courtrooms—now enjoys the rare double privilege of being both a Member of Parliament and the President’s personal bodyguard. In a country that claims to value accountability, these appointments would be unthinkable. Yet in Mutharika’s Malawi, the accused have become the appointed.
Political analyst Z. Allan Ntata, in a searing report titled “When the Accused Become the Appointed: Malawi’s Descent into Sanctified Impunity,” argues that what is happening is not just political misjudgment but a full-blown moral collapse. “Malawi has entered a perilous and unprecedented phase of political decay,” he writes, “one characterized not by the chaos of lawlessness but by the chilling order of perverted law.” The problem, Ntata notes, is not that these appointments are illegal—because technically, they are not—but that they expose how the law itself has been emptied of its moral purpose. The rule of law has become a convenient disguise for corruption rather than a defense against it.
Ntata calls this disturbing trend “Sanctified Impunity,” a term that perfectly captures the current moment. It is the point where corruption no longer hides in the shadows but walks boldly through the front door of power. The accused are not sidelined—they are sworn in, publicly honored, and given command over the very institutions meant to hold them accountable. It is a deliberate normalization of wrongdoing. Every such appointment tells Malawians that political loyalty now matters more than moral integrity, that corruption is not a liability but a path to promotion.
For the honest police officer, the upright magistrate, or the civil servant who still believes in ethics, this new reality sends a dangerous message: integrity is weakness, and honesty is for the naïve. The system now rewards deceit wrapped in devotion and punishes truth-telling. This twisted incentive structure guarantees that corruption will reproduce itself from the top of the government downward, infecting every level of the public service.
What Malawi is witnessing is not governance—it is a calculated dismantling of the moral foundation of the state. When a police chief is himself a subject of investigation, when ministers rise through forged credentials, and when a presidential bodyguard becomes a lawmaker, the entire notion of accountability collapses. The republic is being converted into a private fiefdom where laws exist only to protect those in power.
Malawians are being fooled into thinking this is normal politics, but it is something far more dangerous. This is the slow corrosion of the nation’s soul. If the current trend continues, the DPP government will not just fail to fight corruption—it will institutionalize it. Ntata’s warning is clear: a country that legalizes impunity commits treason against its own future. The moral decay now being sanctified through these appointments is not a path to progress but a descent into national betrayal.
Malawi deserves better than this spectacle of recycled scandal and sanctified impunity. The DPP’s shallow appointments are not signs of renewal but evidence of rot. With this cabinet list, Mutharika’s government has shown the nation exactly where it stands—and that is nowhere near the reform and integrity Malawians were promised.
