Honorarium fuelling chieftaincy disputes

BY WATIPASO MZUNGU JNR

                                            Chieftaincy has become lucrative job: Kachikho installing TA Kanduku

The mouth-watering honorarium traditional leaders draw from government coffers every month is the main driving force behind wrangles over succession, government has said.

Malawi has of late witnessed an increase in the number of royal families fighting over chieftainship. And most of these families handed up dragging each other to the courts.

In an interview Friday, Director of Chiefs Administration in the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, Lawrence Makonokaya said the “very good lump sum allowances” that government gives to the chiefs has been the major contributor to the wrangles in royal families as everyone wants to benefit from the facility.

The chiefs payroll indicates that a paramount chief gets K55,000 every month while a senior chief goes away with K38,000.

A traditional authority (T/A) draws a monthly honorarium amounting to K25,000 while his deputy (Sub T/A) gets K18,000. Group Village Headpersons and Village Headpersons pocket K5,000 and K2,500, respectively.

Said Makonokaya, “Unlike in the past when traditional leaders were working purely on voluntary basis, nowadays everybody that comes from a royal family wants to benefit from this arrangement.”

But the director said the trend will soon be history because government is working on measures to deal with the problem.

According to Makonokaya, every royal family will now be required to submit what he described a “chieftaincy tree” and line of succession to the Ministry of Local Government to avoid the protests when one is anointed to succeed their late ancestors.

“This will be done in the presence of the reigning chief,” he said adding that the exercise has already started in some parts of the country, but on a small scale.

A few days ago, Paramount Chief Chikowi of Zomba confessed before Minister of Local Government Anna Kachikho that the monthly stipend they get was driving many people [from royal clans] to want to assume the position of a chief.

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