The election currently underway in Malawi perfectly illustrates the generational battle in African politics.

Peter Mutharika, vying for a second and final term as President, has a record of achievement to show voters.

He’s brought down inflation this past five years from 14% to 9%.

He is promising the people of one Africa’s poorest countries that Malawi is going  the way of Singapore or Malaysia.

This is somewhat hyperbolic given that more than half the nearly 19-million Malawians live under the poverty line.

Food shortages dog daily life and the 11% of the population with electricity suffer frequent power outages.

Mutharika’s image has been further dented by his having to return a $200 000 campaign donation from a businessman implicated in a $3-million scam involving the contract for supplying food to the police force.

There are seven faces on the presidential ballot paper competing for the votes of seven million electors.

Mutharika’s main rival is his former hand-picked  vice president Saulos Chilima who broke with him last year when it became clear he was running for a second term.

The incumbent, who is a former law professor, is 78 years old.

His sister-in-law Callista, widow of former President Bingu Wa Mutharika, is among those who have advised him that he has passed his sell-by date.

This is a telling argument with more than half of the electorate younger than 35 years.

Former telecoms executive Chilima is 46.

The third frontrunner is former Lazarus Chakwera who ran second to Mutharika in 2014.

He has revived Hastings Banda’s Malawi Congress  Party  and secured the endorsement of former President Joyce Banda. Chakwera is 64.

Age has been a determining factor in a number of recent African political contests.

In South Africa, Julius Malema and Mmusi Maimane, both 38, made much of the fact they were running against 66-year-old Cyril Ramaphosa.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, 74, is going to extraordinary and unconstitutional lengths  to ward off the challenge of Pop-singer-turned MP Bobi Wine, who is 37.

Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa, 76, had his work cut keeping 41-year-old Nelson Chamisa at bay.

Two African presidents have fallen to popular protest this year.

In Sudan, Omar Al Bashir is 75.

Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika is 82. 

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She was speaking as she was about to be sworn in as a new member of the Pan African Parliament.

Thandi Modise has a very clear view of her future.

“I am and wish to continue to be chairperson of the National Council of Provinces and I am about tone sworn in as a member of the Pan African Parliament,” she says.

She says if she very much doubts reports she’s  about to be redeployed in North West Province because if this were so the ANC would surely have told her not to be sworn in at the PAP.

Modise becomes one of five South Africans on the 255-member continental body starting the sixth session of its fourth parliament today.

The others include Julius Malema and Mandla Mandela.

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He says the killing of 34 striking platinum miners by police deserves to be commemorated as seriously as the 1960 Sharpeville massacre of black protestors by apartheid police.

Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema was addressing thousands at the fifth anniversary commemoration of the Marikana massacre.

That was when police shots  cut down 34 striking miners after a week of violence that had claimed  ten more lives.

Malema’s party colleague Advocate Dali Mpofu, who represented the miners families at the commission of inquiry following the massacre, says government has not yet compensated the families of the dead.

EFF MPs have contributed a million rand to help build houses for miners’ families at Marikana.

Malema says further contributions will be made.

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa remains at the centre of the tragedy.

As a shareholder of the Lonmin Platinum Mine that employed the strikers he called for police action at the time to end the work stoppage.

He has subsequently apologized for  making this request.

Nevertheless the general secretary of the miners’ union AMCU Joseph Mathunjwa said Ramaphosa was not welcome at the commemoration ceremony.

Ramaphosa who is challenging for the leadership of the ruling African National Congress at its elective conference later this year, was a Marikana yesterday . He went to visit widows of the slain strikers.

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The EFF members in their red boiler suits refused to allow President Jacob Zuma answer Parliamentary questions. They insisted he was the one who should be removed for violating South Africa’s constitution.

This is the second time in a fortnight that scuffles have erupted in the National Assembly after speaker Baleka Mbete ordered the protection officers to remove EFF MPs who refused to allow President Jacob Zuma to speak.

The MPs threw bottles and hard hats – part of their worker uniforms – at the security officers.

Outside the chamber they set off a fire hydrant and broke a glass door with a steel rod.

Medical personnel were called to assist an MP – understood to be from the ANC – who collapsed.

MPs from the governing party are calling for the EFF members to be charges with criminal damage to parliamentary property.

EFF leader Julius Malema says  his party has exhausted all peaceful means to ask Zuma to resign. In future they will answer violence with violence.

Earlier this week the EFF failed in a court bid to interdict Mbete not to use protection officers to remove MPs when they  prevented Zuma  from speaking in Parliament.

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Members of the opposition Democratic Alliance then walked out in protest against the presence of armed police in the House.

The delivery of President Jacob Zuma’s state of the nation speech, traditionally listened to in silence by members in a joint sitting of the upper and lower houses, was delayed by an hour as red-boiler-suited members of the Economic Freedom Fighters rose on questions of privilege.

They asked when Zuma would comply with the Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s ruling that he pay back money used to personally enrich himself from state-funded security improvements to his private home.

Speaker Baleka Mbete responded that this was not the occasion for such questions. When he persisted, she ordered Julius Malema to leave the chamber.

He refused.

When the Sergeant at Arms from the National Assembly and Black Rod from the National Council of provinces could not move him, Mbete ratcheted up matters.

Parliamentary leader of the Democratic Alliance Mmusi Maimane led a walkout when the speaker would not confirm that the armed men involved in scuffles with the EFF members were police.

He told reporters in the lobby

That having police in the House violated the consitution and the rule of law that Nelson Mandela had worked for.

Zuma who grinned through the ruckus began his speech saying South Africa’s growth target of five percent annually was under threat because of slow global economic conditions.

However the job situation’s more promising with more than 15 million South Africans in employment.

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