OPINION | Patrick Mwanza and Patrick Njawala

If you became seriously ill and disclosing your condition would result in termination and loss of income, would you still tell your employer?

It is an ethical question with no easy answers. People will differ, depending on circumstance, risk and principle. But when the “employee” is a sitting president, the question becomes unavoidable and far more consequential.

That question resurfaced in Malawi on Monday, December 15, 2025, when President Arthur Peter Mutharika returned home after spending 10 days in South Africa on what government officials described as a “private visit.”

The announcement triggered mixed reactions. One school of thought accepted the explanation without hesitation, arguing that the president is entitled to privacy like any other citizen. They contended that government operations continued uninterrupted during his absence and that calls for disclosure were unnecessary, politically motivated, and made in bad faith.

Others were unconvinced.

For critics, the trip reopened unresolved questions about age and fitness for office. These issues featured prominently during the September 16, 2025 presidential election campaign.

Opponents of Mutharika had made his age central to their critique, arguing that it was his most visible vulnerability. Some went as far as proposing laws barring anyone above 80 from contesting the presidency. Political figures from across the divide, including UDF presidential candidate Atupele Muluzi and People’s Party leader Joyce Banda, openly questioned whether Malawi could be led effectively by an octogenarian.

Yet voters rejected that argument decisively.

Despite appearing less frequently on the campaign trail than his rivals, Mutharika won convincingly, defeating incumbent President Lazarus Chakwera by a landslide margin of 56.8 percent to 33 percent, a result so decisive that Chakwera conceded before vote counting was completed.

Still, the debate did not disappear. It merely went quiet.

Related: Malawians weigh rival visions before September 16 vote

Mutharika’s choice of South Africa as the destination for his private visit reignited speculation not because of geography, but history. South Africa has long been a medical tourism hub for political leaders across the region, a fact that has conditioned public suspicion whenever a sitting president travels there under a veil of secrecy.

Opposition Umodzi Party president Thomas Wezzie Kaumba was among those who demanded answers.

“What is President Peter Mutharika doing in South Africa?” Kaumba asked. “Malawians who pay his salary are entitled to know the truth.”

Kaumba argued that pressing national issues, particularly challenges surrounding the Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP), required the president’s direct involvement. Before departure, the president had delegated his authority to Vice President Jane Ansah.

It is important to state clearly: questioning the handling of the visit is not the same as alleging the president sought medical treatment. No such claim is being made here. The concern lies in how secrecy, however lawful, interacts with Malawi’s historical experience.

A presidency shaped by health crises

Malawi’s sensitivity to presidential health did not emerge in a vacuum.

In 1993, founding president Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda was flown to Johannesburg for brain surgery during the delicate transition from one-party rule to multiparty democracy. Four years later, Banda died of respiratory failure in the same South African hospital after being transferred there in a coma.

In 2012, President Bingu wa Mutharika died of a heart attack in Lilongwe. Despite confirmation that he had passed away en route to Kamuzu Central Hospital, his body, still attached to life-support equipment, was flown to South Africa, creating the false impression that he was alive. The public was fed contradictory and misleading statements about his condition, plunging the country into confusion at a critical constitutional moment.

Related: Chakwera skips Mutharika’s swearing-in amid hostility fears

These episodes hardened public distrust. As a result, trips to South Africa by leaders are rarely viewed as neutral events.

In 2016, following speculation about President Mutharika’s health after an extended visit to the United States for the UN General Assembly, the Malawi government warned that spreading rumours about the president’s health was a criminal offence. BBC News quoted officials reminding the public that freedom of expression must be exercised “responsibly and within the law.”

Legally, Malawi’s Constitution does not compel a president to disclose medical records. Article 37 guarantees access to state-held information, and the Access to Information Act — enacted in 2016 and operationalised in 2020 — reinforces that right. But neither instrument mandates disclosure of a leader’s personal health details.

Nor should it be required.

The ethical challenge lies in defining the boundary between private illness and public incapacity.

This is not about whether a president has high blood pressure, arthritis, insomnia, hearing difficulties, or requires mobility assistance. These conditions affect millions and do not automatically impair leadership. To demand disclosure of such details would be invasive, discriminatory and unjust.

The concern arises only when there is reasonable doubt about whether the country is being led by an invalid: someone no longer capable of making informed, timely and independent decisions in the national interest.

A president enters office under a social contract with the governed. That contract demands accountability and a minimum level of transparency, even as it protects personal dignity. Where health affects the ability to govern, reassurance — however general — becomes necessary.

Vagueness may be permissible. Total silence is not without cost.

Health professionals may argue, as British physician Lord Cohen once did, that a patient’s secrets should go to the grave with them. That principle holds in private life. Public office complicates it.

In democracies, trust is the currency of leadership. It cannot be commanded, and it does not survive prolonged secrecy. History shows that obfuscation, whether intentional or not, creates panic, rumours and instability.

President Mutharika has a right to privacy. But the Malawian public also has a right to confidence that it is not being governed in uncertainty.

Privacy is a right. Leadership, however, demands trust and trust does not thrive in the dark.

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Also Read: Mutharika back home after calls to cut South Africa trip short