The Chikulamayembe wrangle dies with Mtima

You know how some stories in Malawi refuse to die quietly? They drag on for years, through courtrooms, village meetings, tear gas and endless petitions, until something bigger than all the lawyers and politicians steps in and draws a final line. That is what happened this morning in Mzuzu.

The late Mtima Walter Gondwe, whose claim to the Chikulamayembe throne sparked a protracted succession dispute.

Mtima Walter Gondwe is gone. The family, speaking through Group Village Headman Kamuzinga, confirmed he passed away at Mzuzu Central Hospital after a two-month struggle with severe back pain. For many in Bolero and across Tumbukaland, the news lands with the weight of unfinished business. Because this was never just about one man’s illness. It was about a throne that had become a battlefield.

Let us rewind a little, shall we?

The Chikulamayembe stool is not some ordinary village headship. It is the Paramountcy of the Tumbuka, the Themba la Mathemba, rooted in the Nkhamanga-Henga country and restored in 1907 after the chaos of the Ngoni wars. From Chilongozi Gondwe to John Hardy Gondwe and then to Walter John Hardy Gondwe, who ruled from 1977 until his death in November 2018, the line had a certain rhythm to it. When Walter died at 86, the expected succession turned into something else entirely.

The burial site of John Hardy Gondwe, who served as the 11th Chikulamayembe from 1932 to 1977.

Mtima, the late chief’s son, stepped forward. Blood, after all, is blood. But a rival camp insisted the chieftaincy should rotate among the royal houses, and they put forward Joseph Bongololo Gondwe. What followed was seven years of the kind of drama Malawi specialises in. High Court injunctions. Judicial reviews. One installation in 2019. Another in 2022, complete with tear gas drifting across Bolero while government officials tried to crown one man and supporters of the other refused to blink. Mtima held on to the sacred stick and the litchowa. Bongololo held the official recognition. The villages held their breath, and sometimes their stones.

A damaged Malawi Government vehicle after violence erupted during the installation of Joseph Bongololo Gondwe as Chikulamayembe in 2022.

You can almost hear the older folk in the courtyards shaking their heads. In these parts, when the living cannot settle a royal quarrel, the conversation often drifts into the language of matsenga and ziwanda. A determined claimant who suddenly spends two months bent double with back pain? Some will call it medical misfortune. Others will raise an eyebrow and say the ancestors, or something less polite, finally grew tired of the noise. Either way, the practical result is the same.

The courts had spoken. The State House had spoken. The elders had spoken, sometimes at cross purposes. Yet the deadlock remained. Until this morning, when mortality did what no judge or minister could manage. It closed the personal contest.

Does this mean the deeper questions are settled? Of course not. Custom versus statute, rotation versus direct succession, the proper place of government in royal affairs—those arguments will outlive all of us. What ends today is the particular standoff that defined the Chikulamayembe story since 2018. One claimant is no longer here to press his case.

Hail the King — Paramount Chief Chikulamayembe XIII, Joseph Bongololo Gondwe.

Raphael Tenthani used to say that in Malawi, power is never just about the title; it is about the stubborn human heart that refuses to let go. Mtima Gondwe never formally surrendered. Now the decision has been taken out of human hands. The throne remains occupied. The community remains divided. And somewhere between a mortuary in Mzuzu and the royal headquarters in Bolero, the long quarrel has been interrupted by the one authority that never loses an argument.

Funeral arrangements will be announced in due course. In the meantime, Tumbukaland does what it has always done when a chapter closes this way: it pauses, it whispers, and it waits to see what the living will make of the silence.

And when sitting beside the fire tonight at the homestead they will whisper Vyamala Mbwenu, Tanozga Yula.

Rest in Peace Walter Mtima Gondwe

Hah!! Hah!!