Former Cabinet minister Symon Vuwa Kaunda has been granted bail by Lilongwe’s principal resident magistrate Viva Nyimba.
Principal Resident Magistrate Viva Nyimba granted former minister of lands Symon Vuwa Kaunda bail.
Kaunda who is being accused of engaging in a corrupt transaction with a private individual where he gave a bribe to a Nation Publication Journalist Boby Kabango amounting to K50 000, is also accused of Abusing his office during the time he was minister of lands.
ACB director general Reyneck Matemba said Kaunda, was implicated in the allocation of a 1.1-hectare plot to his former Cabinet colleague Charles Mchacha with 99- year lease effective July 2019 at a value of K30.5 million.
Vuwa Kaunda given bail
Reading out the bail conditions, Nyimba ordered Kaunda to pay K500, 000 bail bond, to present one surety bonded at 500 000 non cash, surrender travel documents to ACB and to tell his sympathisers not to interfere with ACB lawyers’ work and witnesses, failing which his bail will be revoked.
Chimwemwe Sikwese, Lawyer representing Kaunda, said the matter has been adjourned to 6 January 2021 because ACB has not yet gotten a consent from Director of Public Prosecution to commence trial.
He said, Kaunda has just been formally charged pending his plea to the charges.
Former president Peter Mutharika has taken the graft busting body, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to court for refusing to unfreeze his bank accounts.
ACB director general Reyneck Matenba has confirmed at a news conference in Lilongwe that Mutharika has sued the graft busting body.
The ACB froze personal bank accounts of Mutharika, his wife Gertrude, step son Tadikira and former aide Norman Chisale as the graft busting body investigates the four over various corruption cases.
Mutharika:
Matemba said the law was followed to the latter when closing the bank accounts.
On Affordable Input Program (AIP) mess, Matemba said the bureau is monitoring the program and challenges the program is facing.
He said if anything suspicious comes up, ACB is ready to investigate.
Matemba called on people to guard the program and not take advantage of it.
He said his officers on the ground have spotted network problem that has made others vulnerable and engage in corruption to beat the congestion that comes with network.
Mkango Resources’ Malawian subsidiary has completed an extensive hand-auger drilling and soil sampling programme to identify rutile prospects within the 869 km2 Mchinji licence, in Malawi.
The samples have been transported to specialist assay laboratory Scientific Services in Cape Town
Four geological teams on site completed the 75 auger drill holes, containing 581 samples, and a further 446 soil samples have been collected from a soil sampling programme on a regular 500 m sampling grid. Another 21 soil samples were collected from other points of interest.
Mkango says a preparation process for heavy mineral separation is in progress, following which detailed mineralogical analysis will take place.
he company notes that prior auger holes drilled in June to 8.9 m depth returned samples containing between 4.10% and 9.01% total heavy minerals and grade between 3.17% and 4.09% titanium dioxide.
Rutile, anatase and ilmenite are naturally occurring titanium dioxide minerals, whose main uses are 90% for pigments, 5% for the production of titanium metal and 5% for welding.
Rutile is the purest, highest-grade natural form of titanium dioxide and is the preferred feedstock in manufacturing titanium pigment and producing titanium metal.
Powdered rutile is often used in paints, plastics, paper, foods and other applications that call for a bright white colour, as well as used in the making of glass, porcelain and ceramics.
Titanium, in turn, has specialty uses including in welding, aerospace and military applications.
The company is focused on developing the Songwe Hill rare earth deposit in the Phalmobe district in Malawi
Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) on Monday took advantage of the stakeholders meeting it held in Mangochi to warn candidates participating in the by-elections in the district to avoid indulging in violent acts, stressing that MEC will disqualify anyone who may be found in the wrong.
MEC is conducting by-elections in two constituencies in the district, namely Mangochi West and Mangochi North-East after the constituencies fell vacant due to nullification of 2019 results after two independent candidates obtained court injunction, challenging MEC for presiding over a flawed election.
The by-elections, which are slated to be conducted on 15th December is also expected to take place in Phalombe North due to the same nullification reasons.
Sangwani Mwafulirwa
Initially, the by-elections were scheduled to take place alongside the Makhuwira South Ward in Chikwawa East, Lilongwe North West and Karonga Central which MEC conducted on 10th November, 2020; but MEC deferred them.
This was after Mangochi North East candidate, Martin Sekati Nyengo obtained a court injunction, challenging MEC’s decision to conduct fresh registration and allow new candidates to contest, a development that later saw Nyengo wining the case, thereby, disturbing the electoral calendar.
But speaking during the meeting, MEC director of media and public relations, Sangwani Mwafulirwa seized the gathering’s opportunity to send a warning shot to all the candidates to void inciting violence, saying MEC wants credible and successful by-elections.
“The commission is very eager and ready to conduct by-elections in these three constituencies as per the court’s order. I must say we are very much committed to embark on activities that will see us conduct a free, fair and credible election,” he explained.
“Therefore, let me urge all the competing candidates to refrain from instigating violence. Should there be any violence which the commission establishes that you have perpetrated, we don’t have choice but disqualifying you,” he warned.
To this end, he challenged the candidates to strive at offering issue-based campaign, tipping that it is the only panacea that can help them win the election than winning votes through intimidations.
In his remarks, one of the stakeholders, Turner Banda from National Initiative for Civic Education (Nice) Public Trust urged MEC to ensure training of candidates monitors if the electoral body is to minimise cases of violence during the voting day.
On his part, Mangochi district council director of administration, Dominic Mwandira thanked MEC for the meeting, saying the activities the meeting highlighted will help stakeholders to follow the events leading to the by-elections, noting this fosters transparency and accountability.
The UK based Malawian Comedian Daliso Chaponda is to return to BBC Radio 4 . His Citizen Of Nowhere is set for a third series and will be addressing the coronavirus crisis.
Set to record next summer, the latest episodes of the radio series will be about “hope” Chaponda has said.
Daliso Chaponda
“Because it has mostly been written so far during Covid, it is very much about hope in the face of hopeless situations”, the former Britain’s Got Talent finalist told an online audience at The University of Wolverhampton, in a talk titled “Joking about Race, Politics and Your Lovelife without Offending People”.
“It’s very much like not giving in to despair, ways of coping” he said. “Each episode has a theme and there’s going to be an episode of blame. There was a lot of worrying, blaming different groups for Covid. So there’s an episode on blame and forgiveness and then other episodes with how you cope with despair.”
Citizen Of Nowhere‘s initial four-episode series aired in 2018, following Chaponda’s BGT success the year before. It was followed by a second series in 2019.
“So the first series of Citizen Of Nowhere was very much concerned with history and immigration” he recalled. “It was mainly about colonialism, slavery and then it was also talking about things like immigration and interaction between different societies. That was what was really on my mind back then.
“Then the next series was very much about, interestingly, cancel culture and about what’s appropriate to say, what’s not appropriate to say,. That was probably what motivated me.”
Chaponda, who is based in the UK, also disclosed that he’d been against casting James Quinn as the patrician voice of the Establishment in the series, and how that had shaped the writing.
Citizen Of Nowhere is produced by Carl Cooper. Chaponda , son of former cabinet Minister and Member of Parliament Dr George Chaponda has performed several times in Malawi
