Monday, September 28, 2009

Chafukira family seek state intervention

The late Ishmael Chafukira being sworn-in as a Member of Parliament for Lilongwe North West in June this year. He was in his second term as MP. Pic by Malawi Digest.

The death of the Member of Parliament for Lilongwe North West Ishmael Chafukira remains mysterious as the cause of his death remains unknown and his family has since asked for the intervention of the state.

The family has since asked the Malawi Government to carry out more investigations and bring to light on what led to his death.

Speaking on Sunday during burial ceremony, a member of the family, Group Village Headman Matekwe observed that there was more to his death, and that they were puzzled on why the cause of his death remains unknown.

“As a family, we are asking government to do more and unearth what caused the death of our son. As of now, we are totally confused,” he said.

Matekwe said the untimely death of their son and Member of Parliament has robbed them of development for the area.

He said the constituency had trust in the work of their parliamentarian as he was development conscious.

“We don’t know of what can be our next move as he has left us destitutes,” said Matekwe.

Echoing what Matekwe said, a Member of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) Taskforce, Boniface Kadzamila said Chafukira’s death will have an adverse impact on the operation of the task force which is propagating change in the MCP.

“Chafukira was instrumental in our activities as a taskforce and had a better vision to bring back the MCP to glory, which it had during the time of Kamuzu,” he said.

Kadzamila, therefore, asked well wishers and members of MCP to assist in achieving the dream Chafukira had by standing for the truth.

In his remarks, the Speaker of the National Assembly, Henry Chimunthu Banda, said the death of Chafukira has a lot of unanswered questions as it was till not known what caused his death.

He observed that Malawi trusts South Africa as having high class physicians but to tell Malawians that they failed to detect the cause of Chafukira’s death, was worrisome.

‘‘From what we got, the postmortem that was carried out at Messina Hospital in South Africa revealed that he had no infection which could have led to his death. However, we requested for a detailed examination and the body was taken to another hospital where we are still waiting for the results,” said Chimunthu Banda.

He further said that when the body arrived on Saturday at Kamuzu International Airport, it was first taken to Kamuzu Central Hospital for another postmortem of which the results will be known in few weeks time.

Delivering a message of condolence from Malawi State President Ngwazi Dr Bingu wa Mutharika, Chimunthu Banda said the President was saddened by Chafukira’s untimely death.

He said the President described Chafukira a member of parliament who was objective and constructive during debates in the National Assembly.

Born in 1966, Chafukira is survived by a wife and two children. Before joining politics in 2003, he worked for Ministry of Education and other organisations including Malawi Broadcasting Corporation and Malawi National Library Services after graduating with a Bachelors Degree in Arts at Chancellor College.

Chafukira died on October 20 at hotel Messina in South Africa under mysterious circumstances where he went to buy a vehicle.

4 comments:

  1. bambo Chafukira mzimu wanu uwuse muntendere.Zoonadi boma lifufuze bwino even though he will not come back.As a family just accept what has happened because u've tomorrow to live.

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  2. Date OF DEATH in the story yalakwika..it was supposed to be 20th SEPTEMBER 2009 and not 20TH OCTOBER .


    MHSRIP...

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  3. OLO AFUFUZE WAPITA BASI.LET US LEAVE IT GOD WILL JUDGE US.Enafenso tili ndi zomwe timapanga but the question is if we die like this are we going to go to heaven?

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  4. Kodi ndiye timve ziti? survived by a wife and 2 children? or 2 wives and 4 children?

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