If there are officials who have outlived their usefulness at the University of Malawi, Registrar Martin Matululu and Vice Chancellor Professor Samson Sajidu surely top the list. Their leadership is not just weak—it is reactive, petty, and vengeful. Instead of guiding students as future leaders, they treat them as political enemies. They masquerade as technocrats but behave like politicians running vendettas.
Take their shameful handling of former Student Union President Humble CS Bondo. They fought him not with reason, but with personal grudges—going so far as to defy court orders just to humiliate a student. This kind of arrogance is poisonous to young leaders. It teaches rising voices that university leadership is not about nurturing potential but about crushing it. Bondo has since filed contempt of court, and one hopes the judiciary will remind these so-called academics that no one is above the law. Orders from the court, however inconvenient, must be respected until properly set aside. Yet Matululu and Sajidu behave like untouchables, trampling both law and dignity.
And today’s events underline their incompetence even more. Students were forced to take to the streets over issues that should have been resolved at the table. Only after protests did the university administration finally scrap the controversial K200,000 teaching practice fee and the proposed ninth semester. Registrar Matululu confirmed the fee waiver and said a new eight-semester curriculum would now apply. Students have since suspended their demonstrations, but the damage has been done.
This is not leadership—it is crisis management by people who seem incapable of foresight. Malawi cannot afford university heads who reduce governance to petty wars and reactive firefighting. If President Peter Mutharika’s new administration is serious about reform, it must scrutinize Sajidu and Matululu’s condescending conduct and consider replacing them with leaders who understand that universities are nurseries of democracy, not battlegrounds for petty vendettas.
