No Fooling on Fools' Day

Author's note: this article was first published in The Sunday Times

April 1, the day that is dedicated to “unreasonable acts, jokes and all foolishness”, has been losing its sensation in recent years. In the past, the day was marked by the commission of funny or humorous jokes of varying complexity. People would fool each other to the point where relationships strained. But that was just for a short time: it was dedicated to “foolish acts” and long at last, people would understand each other.

This year, when information was being spread on social sites, before it reached the mainstream media, that Chancellor College and the Malawi Polytechnic had been closed, people thought it was just one of those Fools’ Day rumblings. But it wasn’t; students were given two hours to vacate the colleges.

But, to Makhumbo Munthali, a fourth year student at Chanco, there was more tragedy attached to April 1 than the closure of his school, as he woke up in a prison cell where he had been dumped the previous day.

“It was really traumatizing. Finding yourself in a police cell during that period was the last thing one could think of,” he recounts.

“It was around 12:30pm [31 March] when I, together with my roommate and others, unexpectedly found ourselves in a Police land cruiser off to Zomba Police Station where we were to spend some considerable number of days according to the authorities,” says Munthali.

He adds that despite being an ardent sympathizer of the academic freedom fight, he never at any point imagined that he would be arrested; and “not just an ordinarily ethically-justified arrest, but one coupled with brutality”.

It is the nature of life that luck sometimes dawns upon those who rarely seek it. During the students’ protests that culminated in the closure of Chanco and Poly, it was usually those who were not involved in the demonstrations who were arrested by the police. And on Fools’ Day eve, the trend was once more vindicated. Munthali and four others were arrested in the comfort of their dormitory rooms where they thought they were safe from the bullets, the teargas and the police cell.

“On that day, I had made a stern deliberate decision to remain in my room so that I could concentrate on my dissertation proposal and assignment,” rekindles Munthali. “I chose to confine myself within the walls of my room where I thought I was safe, bearing in mind that the Police or any military were prohibited from invading the hostels. I was mistaken; a cell at Zomba Police Station was beckoning.”

In retrospect, he shares that at around 11:30am, about six policemen, dressed in their uniforms, invaded his room after breaking the locked door and proceeded to severely beat him, his roommate and his roommate’s girlfriend who were arrested together with him.

“I started bleeding on the right side of my eye in the process, and such bleeding persisted even when we arrived in the cell. Thank God a Good Samaritan (one of the Police Officers at the station) noticed my bad condition and arranged for our transport to Zomba Central Hospital where after treatment I was taken back to the cell – to spend the night,” he relates.

Luckily, the arrested students were released the following day on April Fools Day in spite of earlier verbal threats that they would spend some days in the cell. Of course, the threats had not been just one of those Fools’ Day jokes, but well-calculated ones, as the students were to see later.

Munthali further recounts that an earlier communication from one highly-ranked official from the Eastern Region Police Headquarters made available to the arrested students while he was at the hospital, prompted him “to burst into a prayer of declaration”.

“This normally highly esteemed official, who also boasted of having passed through University of Malawi corridors, told us that we were going to spend several days in the cell. In fact, such sentiments were indeed to be proven to be true the following day when the state prosecutor bluntly asked the court not to grant us bail for this would tamper with their investigations. He instead asked the court to order us to be in police custody for the next seven days pending investigations,” says Munthali.

The arrested students, who were 19 altogether, were all charged with conduct likely to cause breach of peace, and unlawful assembly. Whatever these mean, it is hard to assess how a student arrested in his own room would cause breach of peace or be assembling unlawfully, wonders Munthali. Was this just another intent of Fool’s Day?

He adds that despite enduring harsh conditions in the cell, they had some lighter moments of fun because of the creative jokes which the inmates shared.

He sums up by observing that with diversity in terms of districts of origin, experience and fields of study – where the arrested students were well split over all three regions as there were students from Karonga, Mchinji and Thyolo, just to mention a few – “the cell offered the best platform for critical and analytical discourse over some political and socio-economic issues affecting Malawi”.

“Nevertheless, in all these experiences we saw the mighty liberating hand of God. God was indeed omnipresent amongst us, giving us the much-needed hope, strength and comfort,” he says. “The big lesson that I learnt in all this is that one ought to be still and just wait upon the Lord when in the midst of storms.”