Bingu wa Mutharika
President of Malawi whose alleged mismanagement of the economy and human rights abuses led to the cancellation of British aid
Bingu Wa Mutharika, the president of Malawi, was a key figure in the politics of the southern African country from the time the former British Protectorate of Nyasaland, as it was then known, achieved full independence in 1964. Mutharika became the first Malawian administrator of the independent country’s civil service — an institution still dominated by the British at the time. But, although initially a favourite of Malawi’s founding president, Dr Hastings Kamazu Banda, Mutharika was soon forced to flee the country, along with half the cabinet, as the president set about eliminating all sources of real and imagined opposition in the process of creating a one-party dictatorship.
Exile for Mutharika was the prelude to a long career as an international civil servant, including stints