Mr. President,
As you continue your private visit in South Africa, two recent reports circulating in Malawi's media landscape deserve urgent attention. Both point, directly or indirectly, to one institution: the Ministry of Lands.
The first is from Area 26 in Lilongwe, where residents are appealing for your intervention in a land dispute involving a private developer and land communities insist is ancestral. While the legal arguments will follow due process, the deeper question is unavoidable: how was this land allocated in the first place, and under what process?
The second report is more troubling. It contains allegations of serious administrative irregularities within the Ministry of Lands itself, suggesting that key decisions on public land allocation are increasingly centralised around the Office of the Commissioner of Lands.
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Among the claims are that plot offer letters may be processed and issued outside formal institutional channels, with allegations that documentation has at times been prepared away from official offices. These remain allegations, but they are serious enough to demand immediate scrutiny.
Whether true or false, they strike at the heart of public trust.
Land administration in Malawi is supposed to be institutional, traceable, and transparent. It should not appear to operate through informal channels or shifting locations. The perception alone that land decisions can be made "anywhere, anytime" undermines confidence in the entire system.
Land is not an ordinary asset. It is power, wealth, and heritage. Once improperly allocated, it is rarely recovered without dispute or damage to public trust.
The Area 26 case may be one symptom of a deeper structural problem: a system where transparency is weakening, processes are becoming centralised, and accountability is increasingly questioned.
If these allegations are false, they must be publicly and decisively dismissed. If they are true, they require immediate corrective action.
Mr. President, Malawi has travelled this road before. History shows that when concerns about governance are ignored, they grow into political and institutional crises. Silence, in such moments, is not neutrality--it is risk.
The responsibility now is clear: investigate, clarify, and act where necessary. Protect institutions, not individuals.
Before public confidence in land administration is further eroded, Malawians need answers--not reassurance.
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