Malawi: Woman Who Saw Chilima’s Plane Go Down Claims She Was Threatened Into Silence

A community member from northern Malawi has told a parliamentary committee investigating the plane crash that killed former vice-president Saulos Chilima that she was threatened and had her two sons taken by police after reporting the disaster to authorities.

Flora Mkandawire, who lived near the Nthungwa forest, gave evidence to the committee probing the June 10, 2024 crash that killed Chilima, former first lady Patricia Shanil Dzimbiri and seven others when a Malawi Defence Force aircraft went down in the Chikangawa Forest en route from Blantyre to Mzuzu.

Mkandawire said she was in the forest collecting firewood when the aircraft crashed, after watching it fly for about three minutes on an apparently altered course.

She described the plane as greyish, flying low with its landing gear down, before it came down in a relatively flat, largely bare area near farmland.

She told the committee she alerted a local teacher, identified as Nthungwa Primary School headteacher Mr Mwalwanda, who called police in Mzuzu at around 11am — roughly an hour after the crash, according to a separate witness account. Soldiers in the forest, who were not visibly armed, ordered her and others to leave before police arrived, she said, and she later heard three gunshots shortly after the crash.

Mkandawire said she initially stayed silent about what she had seen after receiving threats, and that two days after the crash police took away her two sons.

She said the incident deepened her fear, prompting her to deny to police that she had made the call reporting the crash and to sleep in a farm field for several days rather than return home.

She said fear gripped the community in the crash’s aftermath, with villagers avoiding the forest to search for possible survivors.

She also said she later encountered two unarmed people in the forest area following the crash.

The committee has not yet corroborated Mkandawire’s allegations.

Investigators are expected to examine who allegedly threatened her, why her sons were reportedly detained, and what police records exist of her initial call, as part of the broader inquiry into Malawi’s deadliest aviation disaster in recent years.

By Nyasa Times.