PERSPECTIVE | Patrick Mwanza

Something happened this past week that many have long argued is true: political will is often the missing ingredient in unlocking a country’s potential.

This has nothing to do with party loyalty or secret political sympathies. It is a fair assumption, perhaps even a generous one, that most political actors, regardless of ideology, believe they are acting for the good of the country. Even anarchists would make the same claim. Everyone, it seems, believes their actions serve a higher purpose.

Companies are no different.

Take ethanol producer Presscane Limited. After ethanol is processed, a residue remains. Two terms are often used interchangeably: effluent and vinasse. Effluent is a broad label for liquid waste discharged into the environment. Vinasse is the more troubling substance: acidic, hot, and environmentally hazardous.

For years, residents of Chikwawa have believed that this residue has contributed to respiratory, eye, and skin ailments. They have demanded compensation and intervention since at least 2017. Communities living near Presscane’s dumping site complained about the evaporation pond used to dispose of vinasse, citing persistent overflows into homes, farmland, and roads, corrosion of iron sheets from noxious gases, and unbearable odours.

From 2017 to 2025 — across two administrations — the cries continued.

Between 2014 and 2019, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was in power. From 2020, a new administration led by Lazarus Chakwera and the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) took over. Different players, same formation. The result was unchanged: infection, environmental degradation, and communities forced to live, farm, and raise families in compromised conditions.

For eight years, the response was silence.

Then, suddenly, something shifted.

Two ministers travelled to the Lower Shire and spoke plainly. The Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development, Roza Mbilizi, warned that there would be consequences for violating the law.

“As government,” she said, “we intend to resolve this issue using the law, because the company has failed to adhere to issues raised by the National Water Resources Authority and the Malawi Environmental Protection Authority.”

Alfred Gangata — then Minister of Natural Resources, before his reassignment to Sports later that same week — was even more direct.

“The company must do the right thing so that no one continues to suffer,” he said.

Presscane’s CEO, Bryson Mkomawaanthu, accepted the assessment. He pledged corrective action, promised compensation for affected residents, and noted that the evaporation pond at Dyeratu had been in use for years while the company invested in a new effluent treatment plant.

“The company must do the right thing so that no one continues to suffer”

Within a day, the National Water Resources Authority suspended Presscane’s effluent discharge permit, citing non-compliance.

There is no need to dwell on the technical remedies Presscane has now been ordered to undertake. What matters is this: a problem eight years in the making was acted upon almost immediately once senior government officials showed up and shook the tree.

Is this how governance is supposed to work in Malawi?

Perhaps it is, because experience suggests that some business entities respond only when authority is visibly exercised. Corporate social responsibility, it seems, does not always operate on goodwill alone. This reality should worry us as Malawi’s emerging mining sector gathers pace.

But there is a larger lesson here.

Where there is a will, there is a way. If the government wants to strike corruption a serious blow, it can. If it wants roads and bridges that survive the rains rather than wash away each season, it can build them. People, institutions included, rarely deliver excellence by instinct. They respond to expectations, enforcement, and consequences.

President Peter Mutharika, a lawyer by training, has spoken of transforming Malawi into a Singapore. The architect of Singapore’s rise, also a lawyer, was relentless in his pursuit of results. Lee Kuan Yew tolerated no excuses. Some of his methods would sit uneasily with democratic sensibilities, but his resolve was unmistakable.

Singapore is roughly Malawi’s age, beginning its journey in 1965, just a year after Malawi attained independence. Sixty years on, the contrast is hard to ignore. What began as a young, fragile and uncertain nation now stands as the world’s most competitive economy, according to the IMD World Competitiveness Rankings 2025.

This was no accident. It reflects leadership choices made early and sustained with discipline over time. Mutharika has invoked Singapore as a reference point. Taking him at his word, aligning policy and action with that ambition may be the right place to start for a country hungry for change and development.

Transformation is never comfortable. It demands decisions that will anger some, unsettle others, and inconvenience many. But in the end, it benefits even those who resist it.

Chikwawa’s story is not just about pollution or compensation. It is a reminder, quiet but firm, that when the government chooses to act, things move. And when it doesn’t, people pay the price.

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Also Read: Regulator suspends Presscane permit over vinasse spills in Chikwawa