By Ntata Stinger:
At some point, coincidence becomes a legitimate subject for institutional scrutiny.
Norman Chisale has now been the beneficiary of three separate State decisions that brought accountability efforts involving him to an end.
In 2024, after a court acquitted him in the intimidation case, the State appealed; and then withdrew its own appeal.
In March 2026, the State discontinued the criminal prosecution concerning approximately K5.4 billion in unexplained property. Chisale never explained. The court order expressly required the DPP to provide Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee with reasons for that discontinuance. The nation has never been told why.
And now the civil-forfeiture proceedings concerning billions of kwacha in assets have also come to an end, according to today’s Daily Times.
None of this proves Norman Chisale guilty of anything. That is precisely the point. The repeated termination of accountability processes prevents some of the questions raised by the State itself from reaching final judicial determination.
And that creates a different question; one that is no longer principally about Norman Chisale.
It is about the State. How many times can public institutions initiate proceedings against one politically powerful individual, expend public resources investigating and litigating them, make serious allegations before courts, and then abandon the processes before the underlying questions are finally determined?
There could possibly be impeccable legal reasons for all three decisions. But then, why not publish them. Place the three matters before Parliament. Place the chronology on the table. Identify who made each decision. Explain the legal and evidential reasons. Explain what changed between the State vigorously pursuing forfeiture and the State supporting its termination.
Because prosecutorial discretion is itself an exercise of public power. It must therefore be accountable.
The question is not whether Norman Chisale should be convicted. Only a court applying the law to evidence can determine criminal guilt. The question is whether political power is not supposed to fact justice. Political Power in Malawi seems to be the reason for the extraordinary mortality rate of accountability proceedings in Malawi.
That question cannot responsibly be answered by insinuation. But neither should it be silenced by repeatedly saying that every individual discontinuance was legally permissible.
Politicojuridity teaches us precisely why. A pattern can become constitutionally significant even where every individual act comprising that pattern possesses legal form.
So Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee should investigate the pattern; not necessarily Chisale’s guilt.
One powerful politician. Three discontinued accountability efforts.
The public is entitled to know whether this is simply how justice works; or whether this is how power works.
