Once upon a time, Britain coughed up a band so vulgar, so loud, so tragically tone-deaf, that it gave the Queen a headache from across the Thames. They were called the Sex Pistols. They couldn’t play instruments, but they could play the press. They spat, they bled, they self-destructed—publicly and proudly. They were not here to perform. They were here to offend.
And now, Malawi finds itself haunted by a similarly discordant noise. No guitars this time, just greasy microphones, rigged tenders, and the soft clink of cufflinks over stolen public funds. Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the DPP—our very own touring circus of political punk.
Like the Pistols, the DPP are not so much a party as they are a performance: loud, lawless, and allergic to shame. Norman Chisale enters stage left, brooding like Sid Vicious with a bodyguard complex and a fetish for impunity. Gertrude pirouettes in faux humility, her couture dripping with the scent of taxpayers’ tears. Gangata growls in the background, a one-man economy of kickbacks and bottle service, while Jomo Osman stalks the wings, wielding silence like a machete.
This is not governance. This is a mosh pit in a boardroom. A vulgar opera scored in Tipp-Ex and auto-tuned by lawyers with neck fat and no conscience.
Their greatest hits?
- Track One: “2014 – Announce It Before It’s Counted”
- Track Two: “2019 – Whiteout Democracy (The Tipp-Ex Anthem)”
- Bonus Track: “Smartmatic Sabotage (feat. Conspiracy & Confusion)”
Now, having spent a decade remixing electoral fraud into political art, the DPP is back—spitting on the microphone of democracy, screaming rigged! before the first ballot has even met a box. The audacity is almost admirable. Almost.
And yet, in the middle of this cacophony, stands one lone figure poised, deliberate, unmoved by the shrieking. Justice Annabel Mtalimanja. The anti-punk. The metronome in the madness. They fear her not because she is biased, but because she is incorruptible a word so foreign to their playbook, it might as well be Sanskrit.
She is the last beat of order before the encore of theft. The silent refusal between a nation and its plunderers. And that is why they smear her. That is why they slander her. Because she dares to stand between them and a stolen victory.
So, we ask:
Will we really let this band of misfits headline the State House once more?
Will we after all we’ve seen, all we’ve survived hand the mic back to the same sweaty hands that dropped it on our democracy?
Or will we finally unplug the speakers, tear up the set list, and say:
“No encore.”
