The speech launched Mutharika’s unexpected anti-corruption campaign, which can be seen to have three related motivations: to create an effective developmental state; to emasculate his political rivals; and to restore suspended aid flows.
Thus, presidential rhetoric of reform to enable development may be sincere, but is also aimed to woo the reluctant donor community, while attacking Mutharika predecessor, Bakili Muluzi, with the aim of reducing his capacity for political interference. By examining the context of widespread corruption and following the bumpy trajectory of Mutharika’s ongoing campaign against it, this chapter will consider the relative significance of, and relationships between, these three motivations. The chapter evaluates Mutharika’s level of commitment and prospects for success by analysing the highest profile cases within the anti-corruption campaign, and interrogates the wider implications for Malawian politics, development and relationships with donors. The chapter illustrates how anti-corruption interventions meet with complex and competing political motivations in the country charged with reform, some of which share the normative framework of the blueprint donor programme, others of which are more contextual and expedient. A central motive for domestically-driven anti-corruption campaigns seems to be to undermine and delegitimise political opponents, at least in systemically clientelist polities such as Malawi.