An eerie silence, broken only by muffled sobs, engulfed Committee Room 251 at Parliament Building in Lilongwe yesterday as three widows of victims of the June 10, 2024 Chikangawa military plane crash laid bare the emotional scars they have carried for more than two years.
Although each lost a different loved one, their testimonies before Parliament's Ad-hoc Committee investigating the crash converged on one powerful theme: they were left to learn of the tragedy through friends and social media, denied timely official communication, and, in some cases, denied the opportunity to say a final goodbye. As the women spoke, committee chairperson Walter Nyamilandu, known for his commanding voice, repeatedly lowered his tone as grief overtook the proceedings.
In separate appearances, Mary Chilima, widow of former Vice-President Saulos Chilima, Taona Aidin, whose husband Major Wales Aidin, a Malawi Defence Force (MDF) aircraft engineer, also died in the crash, and Sarah Lapukeni, widow of Ministry of Foreign Affairs Deputy Chief of Protocol Abdul Lapukeni, each described the confusion and anguish that followed the disappearance of the military aircraft.
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Mary told the committee that her husband sent her a text message at around 9 a.m. confirming he had boarded the MDF Dornier aircraft bound for Mzuzu before proceeding to Nkhata Bay to attend the funeral of his friend and former Attorney General Ralph Kasambara. The two remained in contact until 10:01 a.m., and at 11:37 a.m., she sent him a WhatsApp message that was never answered. It was only around 3 p.m., she said, that family friend Grace Valera came to her home and informed her that the aircraft had gone missing.
"When I saw her face, I knew something was wrong. The idea that it had been missing since morning didn't even occur to me. I just didn't understand why no one had informed me for over five hours," Mary testified. When Nyamilandu asked whether any government official had formally informed her that the aircraft had disappeared, her response was brief but telling: "I am still waiting."
Mary said former Principal Secretary in the Office of the Vice-President Luckie Sikwese later visited her home alongside then Inspector General of Police Merlyne Yolamu and then Minister of Health Khumbize Chiponda to inform her that the aircraft had crashed.
However, she questioned why authorities had taken so long to launch search efforts. "I remember scolding the Inspector General because it was already evening. I kept asking why it took them so long to start searching, but she could not give me a satisfactory answer. Little did I know it would take 23 hours before they found him," she said. Mary added that she was only allowed to view her husband's body at the morgue on June 13, 2024, three days after the crash.
Officials had warned her to prepare herself because his body had sustained serious injuries. "I had to be strong for my children, and we were grateful that we were finally able to see him again," she said.
While Mary eventually saw her husband's remains, Taona Aidin and Sarah Lapukeni told the committee they were denied that opportunity altogether. Taona said the family was informed that Major Aidin's body had been badly damaged and could not be viewed before he was buried in Monkey Bay, leaving the family without the closure they desperately needed. Sarah similarly testified that only her father-in-law was permitted to view Abdul Lapukeni's body.
According to her, he later described the remains as feeling "wobbly," almost as though the body had been "deboned" before being placed in the body bag. Sarah also emotionally recalled conversations she had with her husband before the tragedy. She said he had repeatedly reminded her that "tomorrow is never guaranteed" before leaving for South Korea with Chilima weeks earlier and again before the flight to Mzuzu.
Although those words now haunt her, she said he never hinted that he feared any specific danger or that there were problems with the aircraft.
Taona's testimony extended beyond her personal grief to the circumstances surrounding the crash itself. She openly challenged the findings of the German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (BFU), which concluded that the accident resulted from pilot error after the crew continued flying under visual flight rules despite poor weather. She criticised the report for relying heavily on assumptions rather than definitive evidence.
"The German report keeps saying, 'we are assuming this happened.' Those are assumptions. In reality, there is nothing," she told the committee. She further revealed that she has never been provided with her husband's post-mortem report and remains unconvinced that the tragedy was purely accidental. She also disclosed that only one of Major Aidin's two mobile phones was recovered after the crash.
According to Taona, her husband was passionate about watching aircraft accident investigation programmes and often explained that if an aircraft engineer believed a crash was inevitable, one of the first actions would be to drain the fuel tanks to minimise the risk of an explosion on impact. She believes that may explain why the Dornier aircraft did not explode despite reportedly carrying enough fuel for the journey.
Her theory echoed earlier testimony from military officers who also questioned why the aircraft remained largely intact instead of erupting into flames. Taona further said her husband's final WhatsApp message, sent at 9:42 a.m., simply read "enroute to Mzuzu." Although she replied within a minute, she never received another response. She, however, noticed his WhatsApp account remained online until 10:16 a.m., prompting her to ask the committee to establish whether he had been communicating with someone about what she suspects may have been a technical fault on the aircraft.
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Mary also recounted another traumatic chapter that followed the crash--the funeral procession to Nsipe in Ntcheu District on June 17, 2024. She described how mourners turned violent and began pelting the funeral convoy with stones, leaving her convinced that she and her children might also die that day. "We were given inadequate protection. My children and I were traumatised beyond belief. I honestly thought that we too were going to die," she testified. She said the late Vice-President's casket was dented by stones while the vehicle carrying her family had its windows smashed.
The violence claimed the lives of four people and left 12 others injured. As Parliament's inquiry continues, the testimonies of the three widows shifted attention from the technical cause of the crash to the profound human cost of the tragedy. While the BFU's final report, released in 2025, attributed the accident to pilot error and noted that the aircraft lacked both a cockpit voice recorder and a flight data recorder, the widows told lawmakers that their greatest burden is not only the loss of their husbands, but also the silence, unanswered questions and lack of closure that have defined their lives since June 10, 2024.
