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Malawi Congress Party (MCP) legislator Sylvestre Ayuba James has alleged that dramatic testimony given by Ephraim Duma before Parliament’s Ad Hoc Committee investigating the death of former Vice-President Saulos Chilima was not a random intervention, but a politically calculated attempt by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to revive a narrative that MCP was responsible for the crash.

In a strongly worded social media post, Ayuba argued that those dismissing Duma’s testimony as bizarre were missing what he described as its political purpose and, crucially, its intended audience.

“Your naivety would be to think that Duma was a random guy at the inquiry and that his evidence is just funny and of no political consequence,” Ayuba wrote.

He alleged the inquiry had been politically motivated from the outset, claiming that some people had hoped it would produce evidence implicating MCP but that witnesses appearing before the committee had instead pointed towards an accident.

Ayuba argued that the absence of an earlier witness directly claiming to have seen suspicious activity around the crash had allowed public opinion to move towards accepting the incident as an accident. He said this carried political weight because Chilima’s death was a major issue in the 2025 election.

“Politically, people out there were starting to exonerate the MCP and accepting the accident was what it was. An accident,” he wrote.

He then made his central allegation–that Duma’s testimony was intended to reverse that trend by reinforcing a narrative that MCP was somehow responsible for Chilima’s death.

“They, hence, needed to fish for a witness who would peddle the Bakili Muluzi TV narrative so that a section of unenlightened Malawians, who are in the majority at the ballot, would still believe MCP killed Chilima and keep this permanently as a reason for not ever wishing MCP back,” he alleged.

There is no evidence presented in the parliamentary testimony establishing that Duma was recruited, rehearsed or planted by the DPP, and Ayuba did not provide evidence for those claims in his post.

Duma’s testimony itself was extraordinary. He told the committee that while travelling on a motorcycle in the Chikangawa area on June 10, 2024, he saw the aircraft carrying Chilima and others, allegedly saw a man he identified as Chilima calling for help from the aircraft, and later claimed he witnessed gunfire at the crash site.

However, during cross-examination, Duma’s account came under significant scrutiny. Asked how he knew the man he saw was Chilima, Duma initially said, “We knew Chilima,” but later qualified his identification, saying: “Not that upon seeing him, it was definitely him.”

He also acknowledged he did not actually see the aircraft catch fire, saying the belief that it was on fire was merely an assumption.

The committee subsequently questioned other aspects of his account, including how an aircraft door could have been open while airborne. Duma said he could not answer aviation-related questions because he had never flown a plane.

Ayuba nevertheless argues that the significance of the testimony should not be measured simply by whether people who followed the proceedings closely find it convincing.

“The whole trick is in the target audience and the language used by the witness. There was nothing random about that,” he wrote, claiming the testimony was particularly designed to resonate with rural voters who may not follow the technical evidence being presented to the committee.

“You and I are laughing at that guy because we are not the target audience,” Ayuba wrote. “But if you jump on a bus to Namadidi or Makanjira tomorrow, you will be shocked at how much people have believed that guy.”

Ayuba further alleged that Duma’s testimony reflected a line that DPP members of the committee, including its chairperson, had been advancing since the inquiry began, pointing specifically to earlier questions surrounding whether an unidentified person or persons could have boarded the aircraft at Kamuzu International Airport without the knowledge of airport authorities or Chilima’s security personnel.

For Ayuba, the political objective was therefore not necessarily to persuade people following the technical proceedings, but to embed a simple political message among voters.

“Those that have believed Mr. Duma are not people to the DPP. They are votes,” he wrote.

He went further, alleging without presenting evidence that Duma had never been at Chikangawa on the day of the crash and had been coached beforehand.

“The DPP just had to find an idiot, rehearse him on the narrative in closed doors, and get the message delivered,” Ayuba alleged.

Those claims remain Ayuba’s political interpretation and allegations, rather than findings established by the parliamentary inquiry.

The committee is continuing to examine Duma’s account alongside technical evidence and other testimony.

On Tuesday, committee members openly challenged aspects of his evidence, while chairperson Walter Nyamilandu defended his consistency and offered to take him to the crash site to demonstrate what he claimed to have witnessed.

Ayuba ended his intervention with a warning to MCP supporters and others concerned about the political consequences of the crash inquiry.

“You must be scared, if you are MCP like me. And more scared if the path of this country matters to you, even if you are not MCP,” he wrote.

The claims have added a new political dimension to an already contentious inquiry, which is now being asked not only to establish what happened to Chilima and the eight others who died in the June 2024 crash, but also to sift competing interpretations of the evidence presented before Parliament.

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Tagged: Malawi, Governance, Southern Africa

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