HRDC descends into chaos as leadership battle heads back to court

The once outspoken Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) has gone conspicuously quiet as an ugly leadership battle threatens to tear the rights watchdog apart.

Mediation talks aimed at resolving the crisis between HRDC’s current leadership and its own Ad Hoc Committee collapsed on Monday, meaning the dispute now heads back to the High Court of Malawi for a full trial.

The talks had originally been ordered by High Court Judge Howard Pemba, who gave both factions 30 days to thrash out their governance disputes, stressing that an annual general meeting (AGM) was essential for transparency and accountability within the organisation.

Central Region Ad-hoc Committee chair Sammy Aaron and colleague Henderson Mhango insisted they were not attacking the competence of the current leadership, but were instead demanding proper procedures for choosing HRDC’s leaders.

Aaron said the committee’s push was aimed at strengthening accountability by amending the constitution to hand members the power to elect their own leaders, pointing to what he described as glaring governance gaps in HRDC’s existing constitution.

The committee is also demanding that HRDC be compelled to hold regular AGMs, and that regional committees be formally written into the constitution with full voting rights and the power to hold national leaders to account.

“We have gone back to court because we failed to agree on some of the proposals we put forward to our colleagues,” Aaron said.

“Our proposals were simple: to review and amend the constitution, conduct annual general meetings, and empower the regional chapters. But they declined.”

“Since they are no longer interested, we have returned to court for a full trial. The date is yet to be set, and we will inform you of the status of this case,” he added.

Members from HRDC’s Central and Southern regions have since given the Ad-hoc Committee the green light to press ahead with the court case, after two rounds of talks between the factions ended without agreement.

HRDC was founded in 2018 under first chairperson Timothy Mtambo, who later stepped down to join frontline politics and was eventually appointed a Cabinet Minister by former President Lazarus Chakwera.

Leadership then passed to Gift Trapence, who resigned and handed over to current chairperson Michael Kaiyatsa in 2025.

The Ad Hoc Committee claims that handover bypassed constitutional requirements, as no AGM was ever held to sanction it – and HRDC has in fact not convened a single AGM since 2019, a gap critics say has severely undermined the organisation’s credibility as Malawi’s leading rights watchdog.

There was no immediate reaction from Kaiyatsa.