Reliable sources indicate that this is the blue Peugeot saloon, registration number BF 5343 in which the dead bodies of Matenje, Gadama,
Sangala, and Chiwanga also known as the Mwanza Four were packed and plunged while disguised as if they had perished during a car accident as they fled the country into Mozambique in May 1983.
This vehicle was kept at Chileka Police Station was 10 years until December 1993 when Police Inspector General Mc William Lunguzi ordered that the vehicle should immediately be transported to Lilongwe where it was incinerated.
This was barely five months before MCP left power.
Was this wanton destruction of evidence???
What was also surprising is that the vehicle was comprehensively insured. This being a road accident as the state claimed, no effort was made to make a claim from the insurance company for the damaged vehicle.
According to the details provided in Dr. John Lwanda’s (1993) book Kamuzu Banda of Malawi: A study in Promise, Power, and Paralysis, the four were arrested on 17 May 1983 along Zomba-Blantyre road, taken to the Eastern Region Police Headquarters in Zomba and spent a night at Mikuyu Prison.
They were transferred to Blantyre the following day where they were brought first to the MCP sub-head office at Chichiri in Blantyre and later to a special branch office in Limbe.
During the night, reports have it that they were hooded, handcuffed, and driven to Mwanza- Thambani back-road which leads south from Mwanza district along the Malawi/Mozambican border, where they were hammered and butchered to death and finally dumped in this blue Peugeot saloon.
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