"Who Killed Malawi's Top General? General Manken Chigawa’s Murder That Still Haunts Malawi"

#TrueCrimeMalawi#AfricanTrueCrime#UnsolvedMystery
#MalawiHistory#PoliticalAssassination#ColdCase
#AfricanHistory#MilitaryMystery



In April 1995, Malawi’s highest-ranking military officer, General Manken Chigawa, was shot dead while buying vegetables at a roadside market near the Mozambique border.
Not on a battlefield.
Not in a military convoy.
Not behind guarded walls.

The official explanation was simple: a robbery gone wrong.
But for nearly 30 years, Malawians have struggled to believe that the Commander of the Malawi Defence Force could be killed so casually — without security — in a rural trading post.

This documentary investigates the murder of General Manken Chigawa, one of the most disturbing and unresolved cases in Malawi’s modern history. We examine the political climate following the fall of Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the rise of multiparty democracy under President Bakili Muluzi, the shadow of Operation Bwezani, coup rumours within the army, suspicious deaths in police custody, and a court-martial that collapsed years later.

As witnesses died, suspects vanished, and key evidence was lost, the truth became harder to reach — and easier to bury.

Was General Chigawa the victim of random criminal violence?
Or was his death a political assassination disguised as crime?

Decades later, this case still refuses to close.

What this video covers:

The killing of General Manken Chigawa on 18 April 1995

Malawi’s fragile transition from dictatorship to democracy

Operation Bwezani and the disarming of the Malawi Young Pioneers

Coup rumours inside the Malawi Defence Force

The death of Thomas Denson Chibonga in police custody

Lieutenant Colonel James Njoloma and the failed coup allegations

Court-martial convictions, Supreme Court reversals, and unanswered questions

This is True Crime Malawi — where history, power, and silence collide.