John Tembo

John Zenus Ungapake Tembo (born September 14, 1932) is a Malawian politician and the President of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), the strongest opposition party in Malawi. Tembo comes from the Dedza District in central Malawi, and he is a teacher by profession. Since the 1960s he has been an important politician in Malawi, and he was a key figure in the regime of Hastings Banda (1964–1994). He has been variously described as "physically slight, ascetic, fastidious" and "cunning".

Early career

Tembo was born on September 14, 1932 in Dedza District, Central Region. His father, Zenus Ungapake Tembo, was a minister of the Church of Central African Presbyterian (CCAP). He attended several primary schools before graduating to Blantyre Secondary School. He later went to study at the University of Roma [also known as Pius XII College] in Lesotho, graduating in 1958 with a Bachelor of Arts in political philosophy. He had a brief stint as a teacher at Dedza Secondary School and later taught for two years at Robert Blake Secondary School in the central region district of Dowa in 1958.

In 1960, two years after Dr. Banda's arrival in the country from Ghana to lead the independence struggle from the British colonial rule, Tembo was invited to take up a parliamentary seat in Dedza South constituency, a seat he has occupied to this day.

Tembo was elected to the legislative assembly of Nyasaland in 1961, three years before the country gained its independence and became the Republic of Malawi. He was the second Minister of Finance in Malawi after independence, succeeding Henry Phillips (later Sir Henry Phillips) in a post for which the intended candidate had been Dunduzu Chisiza; (Chisiza died in 1962 in a car crash). John Tembo was the only cabinet member not to resign in the notorious "Cabinet Crisis" of 1964, after which most of the President's closest lieutenants, their opposition to his policies thwarted, fled the country. (Chinua Achebe in 'A Man of the People' admits having used a real situation gleaned from the Hansards of a certain African country to portray his main character 'Chief Nanga', the heckler in parliament who hounded out the 'offensive minister' who had just resigned. Chief Nanga got one of the leftover ministerial post! One wonders which Hansards and which backbencher heckler Chinua Achebe was referring to!)

Relationship with Banda

Tembo's closeness to the President of Malawi, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, was reportedly strengthened by the fact that Banda took Tembo's niece, Cecilia Tamanda Kadzamira, as his mistress and the official First Lady of Malawi (also known as "Mama"). However and despite the presence and backing of Cecilia Kadzamira, Tembo's political ride was not always smooth. He was prone to taking some unilateral decisions e.g. the '1974 Youth Week Inauguration' venue saga when Tembo decided, without Dr. Banda's permission, to stage the event in Lilongwe to coincide with the 'New Capital City' inauguration gala Dr. Banda had yet to sanction! Dr. Banda found this offensive and in the presence of Gwanda Chakuamba dressed down Tembo before instructing Gwanda Chakuamba to rearrange, at a very high cost to the government, the Youth Week Inauguaration back in Blantyre. Despite Cecilia Kadzamira's intervention, Dr. Banda proceeded to remove John Tembo from the National Celebrations Council and placed him into a minor post of Reserve Bank Governor and the ceremonial Chairman of the University Council. The Banda-Tembo relationship soured and it became an uphill struggle, with Cecilia's active support, for Tembo to regain his position of prominence. His role as the Chichewa interpreter to Dr. Banda was an engineered process so that John Tembo stays in Dr. Banda's face all the time. Cecilia engineered the removal as interpreter and subsequent demise in disgrace of the eloquent Chichewa speaking John Msonthi; whereupon on Msonthi's burial day a gunbattle ensued between the Msonthi and Tembo/ Kadzamira clans. And when John Tembo suggested, during one of Dr. Banda's speech on ubiquitous and 'invisible enemies', that ministers and those around the President should carry automatic weapons to 'defend' Dr. Banda, John Tembo was swiftly rapped on the wrist and a temporary replacement interpreter was arranged!

When Malawi became a republic in 1966 after attaining independence in 1964, Tembo was appointed as Minister of Finance. In 1971, at the Dowa MCP Convention, John Tembo was the 'primary' sponsor (while another two seconded) for Dr. Banda becoming the 'Life President' of Malawi. Dr. Banda rewarded him with postgraduate studies in central banking in Britain and France. Later he was to use the knowledge as Governor of the Reserve Bank of Malawi, a post he held for 13 years.

As confidante to the President, John Tembo was used as Dr. Banda's Machiavellian bludgeon during the later part of Dr. Banda's 30-year tyrannical rule. John Tembo came to personify the negatives that Dr. Banda did. The greater majority in Malawi came to hate John Tembo for the excesses that ideally should have been aimed at Dr. Banda. While, most people became resigned to the 'life presidency' issue (wait until the old man departs), a determination, especially after the Mwanza Assassination, emerged that John Tembo would 'never rule' Malawi. Yet, in a move demonstrating Dr. Banda embraced 'democracy' much earlier than portrayed, Dr. Banda released John Tembo from his duties as Governor of the Reserve Bank and sent him on a two-year sabbatical to the US Congress; to study the workings of democracy. When John Tembo returned in 1989, Dr. Banda appointed him Minister-Without-Portfolio much to the furore and greater agitation for multiparty democracy.

With Dr. Banda's health failing Cecilia Tamanda Kadzamira turned more to John Tembo to do her low-key political bidding. In turn, John Tembo unleashed onto Malawians what Dr. Banda was to later call the 'parallel MCP'. Sections of the Secret Service, Malawi Young Piooners and other agencies, loyal to John Tembo, systematically incarcerated and/ or summarily killed any vocal opposition to his rise to power while the educated, especially those without links to John Tembo's 'Dedza-Ntakataka Connection' were dispatched into exile. Yet, the Machiavelli Dr. Banda did not fully relinguish power. Given a choice between John Tembo and Gwanda Chakuamba, Dr Banda anointed Gwanda Chakuamba as his running mate in Malawi's first multiparty elections, held on 17 May 1994.

In January 1995, some months after Banda lost the election to Bakili Muluzi of the United Democratic Front (UDF), Tembo and "Mama" were put on trial for the murder of the four prominent Malawi politicians in 1983 (the so-called Mwanza trial). While there was little doubt that the four politicians had met their violent end (also allegedly in a "car crash") at the hands of state security forces, there was no direct evidence linking the accused to the murders and they were acquitted. After Banda's death in 1997, Tembo attempted to take over the presidency of the Malawi Congress Party from Chakuamba and defied a high court injunction preventing him from holding a convention to do so. Because the high court ruled him in contempt, he was expelled from the legislative assembly the expulsion of which was successfully challenged and he remains a member of Parliament today in which he holds the position of Leader of Opposition. Using the parallel MCP mechanisms John Tembo finally wrested MCP from Gwanda Chakuamba.

2004 election

As the candidate of the MCP, Tembo officially came in second, with 27% of the vote, in the presidential election held on May 20, 2004, behind the winner, UDF candidate Bingu wa Mutharika, and ahead of Chakuamba, who ran as the candidate of the Mgwirizano Coalition.

On August 28, 2007, Tembo rejected an appeal from Chakuamba for Tembo to become the running mate of Muluzi, the UDF's candidate, in the 2009 election. Tembo said that the MCP would have its own campaign and would not participate in a coalition.

2009 presidential election

Main article: Malawian general election, 2009

On November 1, 2008, Tembo was unanimously elected as the MCP's 2009 presidential candidate at the MCP National Convention held at the Natural Resources College in Lilongwe. Tembo was to face President Mutharika, who was running for a second term as the candidate of the newly formed Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Tembo was considered the main opposition candidate, and the MCP formed an electoral alliance with Muluzi and the UDF prior to the election; the old foes came together with the goal of defeating Mutharika, their mutual enemy. Tembo's vice-presidential candidate was Brown Mpinganjira of the UDF. Observing that the DPP had never participated in an election (it was founded in 2005), Tembo argued that he and the MCP had the experience to govern the country properly: "I belong to the past, I belong to the present and I also belong to the future."

Observers expected a close election between the two strongest candidates, Mutharika and Tembo. While Tembo enjoyed the united backing of the country's two most established and powerful parties—the MCP and the UDF—he faced an incumbent President who had presided over strong economic growth of 8%, and the outcome was considered uncertain.

Ultimately, Mutharika won an overwhelming victory in the election, according to official results, and Tembo alleged fraud. Afterwards, some in the MCP called for the party to recognize Mutharika's victory and for Tembo to resign as MCP President. Tembo refused and vowed to legally challenge the results. He was re-elected as the MCP MP for Dedza South in the concurrent parliamentary election. The MCP's strength in parliament was seriously reduced in that election, as it retained only 25 MPs, while Mutharika's DPP secured a large majority of seats; nevertheless, the MCP remained the second largest party in the National Assembly. When Tembo was sworn in again as an MP on June 2, 2009, he vowed that he would continue as Leader of the Opposition during the 2009–2014 parliamentary term, despite apparently substantial dissent within the MCP.

Parliament initially refused to recognize Tembo as Leader of the Opposition, but in late August 2009 the High Court ordered it to do so on an interim basis.

As MCP President, Tembo opposed the government's move to change the national flag in mid-2010, arguing that the government was "playing with serious matters of the state and the constitution put up by our forefathers."