OPINION | Atupele Muluzi Is Right: It’s Time for Peter Mutharika to Step Aside

Let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop being polite. Let’s say it as it is: Peter Mutharika’s time in Malawian politics is over, and Atupele Muluzi is absolutely right to say it loudly and boldly.

Mutharika is not just old. He is politically exhausted, disconnected, and utterly uninspiring. Malawi is a young nation with urgent problems—and we cannot keep recycling retired leaders whose ideas expired with the past decade. Atupele, whether you like him or not, is echoing a national truth: this country will never move forward if the political old guard keeps clinging to power like leeches on a dying host.

The testimony to Mutharika’s age and frailty is now too glaring to ignore. While the political temperature in Malawi is rising, and the nation’s future is being shaped through fierce debates, shifting alliances, and growing youth activism, Mutharika is completely absent from the battlefield. He is allegedly in South Africa—and no one knows exactly what he is doing there. Rumors of ill health continue to swirl, and DPP’s silence only fuels the suspicion. How can a man who can’t stand the heat even from afar be trusted to lead a country in crisis?

What is truly shameful is not Atupele’s call for Mutharika to retire. What’s shameful is the DPP’s juvenile outrage over such an obvious reality. Shadric Namalomba and the DPP’s inner circle would rather defend political stagnation than embrace generational transition. They want to gag Atupele for saying what even many DPP supporters quietly believe—that APM must exit the stage, with dignity if possible, before he embarrasses himself further.

Let’s not forget: this is the same Peter Mutharika who led Malawi into some of its darkest days—crippling economic mismanagement, unchecked corruption, and a stubborn refusal to embrace reform. His administration was riddled with scandal, complacency, and silence in the face of national suffering. He lost an election twice, once nullified by the courts due to massive irregularities. And now, three years later, he still dreams of a comeback—as if Malawians have forgotten.

But they haven’t. And Atupele Muluzi—young, ambitious, and forward-looking—is offering a dose of political realism in a country drowning in nostalgia.

This is not about disrespect. This is about progress.

We must stop treating politics like a retirement home for the aging elite. We need new blood, new ideas, new energy. And that will never happen if men like Peter Mutharika are allowed to block the future while clinging to the past.

Atupele is not the enemy here. He is the voice of a generation sick and tired of being told to wait. And DPP, instead of attacking him, should be asking itself why it has become a political graveyard, unable to groom any successor except a man who should be spending his twilight years writing memoirs, not manifestos.

History will not be kind to leaders who overstayed their welcome. And if Peter Mutharika truly loves his country, the most patriotic thing he can do is bow out gracefully—and make way for the future.

 

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