Let us begin with an uncomfortable political truth: inside the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), there is a growing belief that the party’s fall into opposition is inseparable from the leadership of Lazarus Chakwera himself, and that what was once gossip and corridor talk has now matured into open rebellion.
Chakwera and Kazembe
This is no longer whispering among insiders but a visible internal revolt, where senior figures increasingly see Chakwera not as the man who can rebuild the party but as the man under whom the party collapsed, and if MCP were to hold a convention today, many insiders privately believe he would not cruise to victory but would face a serious and possibly humiliating challenge.
The frustration is deep and emotional, rooted in the simple feeling that his leadership failed to protect both the party and the presidency, and that strategic miscalculations, political isolation, and poor appointments alienated loyal structures and weakened internal confidence.
The ongoing clash between Gerald Kazembe and Simplex Chithyola Banda is therefore not about ego or factional drama but pure political symbolism, because Chithyola did not rise by accident but through Chakwera’s hand, and in politics every senior appointment is an extension of the leader’s judgment and strategic thinking.
When Kazembe openly attacks Chithyola, he is not merely attacking a colleague but attacking the wisdom of the man who appointed him, which makes this feud dangerous because it is not a fight at the edges of MCP but a direct challenge to the centre of authority, and Kazembe’s message is simple and brutal: you failed us in 2025 and you are still making bad decisions.
This defiance did not begin with Kazembe, because immediately after Chithyola’s appointment, Baba Steve Malondera, MCP’s Director of Youth, publicly criticised the decision, an extremely rare act in a party built on discipline and hierarchy, and although he later withdrew his remarks. In politics, withdrawal does not erase intention, it only confirms pressure.
What matters is not that he apologised but that he spoke, because the resistance was internal, visible, and came from within the system, making it not opposition propaganda but party self-doubt.
The political reality is ruthless: you cannot separate an appointee from the person who appointed him, so if Chithyola is weak then Chakwera’s judgment is weak, if Chithyola lacks legitimacy then Chakwera’s authority is questioned, and if Chithyola is rejected then Chakwera is rejected by extension.
That is why this feud is explosive, because it exposes a leadership crisis rather than a personnel dispute, and inside MCP today a dangerous shift is taking place where Chakwera is increasingly viewed not as the party’s anchor but as its political burden, not as the man who can lead recovery but as the man whose leadership produced defeat.
For many insiders, the question is no longer how to defend Chakwera but how to move beyond Chakwera, which is the most dangerous moment in any political career because it is when loyalty collapses into calculation and respect gives way to survival.
When junior cadres complain, it is noise, but when senior lieutenants rebel, it is crisis, and Kazembe and Malondera are not fringe voices but signals from the heart of the party, meaning the battle is no longer at the margins but at the centre.
The truth is harsh but necessary: the real crisis in MCP is not Simplex Chithyola Banda but Lazarus Chakwera, because Chithyola is only a symptom while Chakwera is the source, and the Kazembe rebellion is not about a man but about direction, authority, and whether MCP continues under contested leadership or confronts the need for internal renewal.
This is how political decline looks before it becomes collapse, not through one dramatic event but through quiet defiance, loyalists turning critical, and silence turning into courage, and today that courage is no longer hidden, the challenge is no longer theoretical, the target is no longer indirect, and the centre of the storm in MCP is no longer Chithyola.
