The gods must be laughing. For the same Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that once dismissed the Northern Region as irrelevant to Malawi’s electoral arithmetic is now desperately clinging to it, like a drowning man to a twig.
And leading this tragicomedy is none other than Alliance for Democracy (AFORD) President Enoch Chihana, a man who has just announced an electoral alliance with the same political machine that has, for years, ridiculed, sidelined, and systematically alienated the North.
Chihana’s reward? The promise of a second Vice Presidency.
For the rest of the North’s 2.3 million people? Well, they’re being offered the same empty promises, hollow rhetoric, and political tokenism that the DPP has mastered since the late Bingu wa Mutharika days.
But let us not mince words: this isn’t just an alliance. It’s a betrayal, a breathtakingly shameful capitulation to the very forces that once called the entire region worthless.
To understand the gravity of this farce, we must revisit the painful history.
In 2014, George Chaponda, then a senior minister in the DPP and now the very man who signed this so-called “Northern Alliance” pact, declared that “the DPP does not need the North to win elections.” It was not a slip of the tongue. It was a window into the party’s true feelings.
There was no apology. No retraction. No disciplinary action. Arthur Peter Mutharika, the man who was both Chaponda’s friend and President, simply looked the other way. Because silence, after all, is consent.
The DPP’s attitude toward the North has always been one of dismissive disdain, thinly veiled under the Lhomwe supremacy agenda disguised as “Muhlakho wa Alomwe.”
The North was tolerated for votes but never respected for ideas, representation, or development.
From university quota systems that targeted Northern students, to the systematic exclusion of Northerners from public appointments and contracts, DPP’s record is loud and clear: you are useful only when needed, dispensable the moment power is secured.
Now fast forward to July 24, 2025.
Suddenly, the North matters again. Suddenly, Chaponda, yes, that Chaponda is grinning for cameras as he signs a new alliance with a suspiciously named “Northern Alliance,” while Chihana stands like a groom waiting at the altar, completely oblivious to the fact that he’s just been conned into marrying his father’s political enemies.
If political naiveté had a face, it would wear Chihana’s smile that day.
This “Northern Alliance” is not a coalition of ideologies. It’s not a marriage of policy blueprints.
It’s not even a strategic unity of purpose. It is a transaction, pure and simple. A hurried patchwork designed to polish the DPP’s fading image and prop up a party that has neither a manifesto, nor a campaign strategy, nor even a candidate healthy enough to hit the campaign trail.
APM is still hiding behind blurry videos and doctored birthday photos. The campaign clock is ticking, but the DPP’s answer is the North.
What a joke.
Make no mistake. Enoch Chihana is not AFORD. He is merely squatting in a house that his father, the late Chakufwa Chihana, built with blood, courage, and conviction. And now, in a historical twist so painful it almost feels scripted, his son is offering the same house as a refuge for those who once vandalized it.
What does Chihana gain from this alliance? A second vice presidency he will never smell? A Cabinet post he will never get? Or is it just the illusion of relevance in a fast-shrinking political life?
And more importantly, what does the North gain? Absolutely nothing.
The alliance is being pitched as a way of “bringing the North back into government.” But what government? A DPP government that once excluded Northern technocrats from public service? That forced out academics and bureaucrats simply because their surnames weren’t “Mwanamvekha”?
Even if the DPP were to win, God forbid, the North would still be last in line. Because that’s how the DPP has always operated: tribe first, everyone else never.
Let’s talk about the so-called Northern Alliance, a club of has-beens and never-weres.
It’s laughable.
Worse still, the alliance has no policy platform, no development agenda, and no ideological backbone. What unites them is not a vision, but a vendetta, against the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), against progress, against anyone who stands in the way of their entitled return to the looting trough.
We’ve been here before.
We saw how under DPP, entire institutions became Lhomwe fiefdoms. From the Reserve Bank to ESCOM, from MACRA to MBC, appointments were no longer about merit, they were about tribe, region, and loyalty to the blue gospel.
Now imagine a DPP-Northern Alliance government. Imagine George Chaponda making education policy again. Imagine Norman Chisale back in the corridors of power, this time with his own moneyed gang in the shadows. Imagine the “quota system” coming back, but worse. Imagine contracts returning to a cabal of connected clans.
This isn’t just a political miscalculation. It’s a national nightmare waiting to be reborn.
The North has always been Malawi’s intellectual engine room. From civil service to academia, from diplomacy to engineering, the region has consistently punched above its demographic weight.
To now be reduced to a bargaining chip in the DPP’s comeback campaign is not just insulting, it’s treasonous to the dreams of past Northern heroes like Chihana Senior, Orton Chirwa, and Dunduzu Chisiza.
This alliance spits on their legacy. It mocks every student denied university admission because of the quota system. It taunts every qualified professional overlooked because they came from “the wrong region.”
Enoch Chihana may think he has struck gold. But he has only sold his political soul for a handshake and a press statement.
And the DPP may think the Northern Alliance is their ticket back to power. But Malawians are not fools. We remember. We know. And this time, we’ll resist.
Because the North is not a fallback option. It is not a stepping stone. And it certainly is not a fool’s bargaining chip.
The next time George Chaponda smiles at the camera while shaking hands with a Northerner, remember: behind that smile is the same man who said “We can win with the South and Centre. The North is not decisive. You are insignificant.”
And behind that handshake is a knife, waiting to cut your throat the moment the votes are counted.
