Chakwera on HEQs says Kamuzu never founded MCP, it was Orton Chirwa: But MCP made him die as political prisoner

President Lazarus Chakwera has said clarified that the founding president Kamuzu Banda was not the founder of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) which he leads now, but late Orton Chirwa, the country’s first attorney general after independence, as the founding father of party.

Chakwera said this Thursday afternoon when he appeared in Parliament to face His Excellency’s Question Time (HEQs) style-session from MPs, a constitutional requirement that has long been ignored by his predecessors.

He said MCP was not founded by Kamuzu.

“Kamuzu was father and founder of Malawi nation. MCP was founded when he was in [Gweru] prison and the Malawi Congress Party was founded by Orton Chirwa,” he said.

However, Orton Chirwa died as a political prisoner during the MCP dictatorship.

Chirwa died in prison in Zomba on 20 October 1992. Aged 73, he had been imprisoned for nearly 11 years for non-violent opposition to the MCP autocracy.

At various times during his imprisonment he had been kept in leg irons and much of his imprisonment was spent in solitary confinement.

His wife, Vera, is still alive and very old.

Chakwera, who quit the pulpit as head of Malawi Assemblies of God in 2013 to join frontline politics, wants to heal about the past atrocities and have a new Malawi that has bound together nine political parties branded Tonse Alliance which is governing.

Other alliance partners in Tonse include UTM Party, Alliance for Democracy, People’s Progressive Movement, Freedom Party, Umodzi Party and Malawi Forum for National Development.