THEN THE DRAMA STARTED.
It could make for a blockbuster Nollywood movie:
"The Death of a President"
The body of the president was then covered in linen, moved to a side room and hooked to a ventilator to give the false impression that he was still alive.
A South African air ambulance was summoned and arrived in Malawi at 8pm, but the air ambulance doctor said they were not taking the body to South Africa. He explained that they had came thinking that they were evacuating a patient, which was clearly not the case.
Still, around 9 pm they moved Bingu's body to the airport and loaded it onto the plane but the pilots refused to fly because they did not have clearance to fly a dead person. They refused to fly a dead body out of Malawi until they were given express authorisation and clearance.
So the pilots demanded that the body be taken off their plane. The air ambulance medical personnel also demanded their linen back.The medical personnel from the hospital had to plead with them as there was no other linen around, meaning the president's body would remain uncovered
Discussions between Malawi and South Africa then ensued, with SA demanding to know why there was need to fly the body to SA when the president was clearly dead. Malawi said it was for postmortem and embalming, and to allow for time for preparation for burial.
Clearance to fly President Bingu wa Mutharika's body to South Africa was later given by President Jacob Zuma.
But another complication arose.
The pilots refused to fly stating that their flying time hours had expired. So they demanded the body taken down from their plane.
But Peter Mutharika, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs, intervened. He made calls to his counterpart in South Africa and after lengthy discussions the pilots reluctantly agreed to fly out of Malawi.
It was past 12 midnight when they eventually took off.
As a disguise, documents and records for the evacuation of the "dead patient" to South Africa bore the name DANIEL PHIRI.
The air ambulance landed at Waterkloof Airforce base in Pretoria around 2:30 am in the morning of 6th April 2012.
On the evening of 5th April 2012, State House issued a Press Release regarding the condition of the president, telling Malawians that Bingu had been taken ill and had been flown to South Africa for specialist treatment.
But South Africa was not happy with this deceit.
The South Africans told Peter Mutharika that if the Government of Malawi was not going to announce the death of President Bingu immediately, then President Jacob Zuma was going to do it himself.
Finally, the announcement of the death of President Bingu wa Mutharika was then made at 8 am on the morning of 7th April 2012.
If Zuma had not threatened them we can only guess when, or how, they planned to let Malawians know the truth regarding the condition of their president
Gorily, the long time taken for the body to eventually be preserved in a mortuary in South Africa on April 6 at 5 am contributed to a condition of decomposition. From time of death, it had taken a period of about 18 hours without Bingu's body being preserved as a dead body.
When postmortem was done on 11th April, the body had started decomposing. Those in the room talked of a bad smell and flies hovering around. The chest had turned greenish in colour and his ribs were broken from the failed attempts to resuscitate him in Malawi
After postmortem, South African pathologists requested that the body be left in open air for four days to allow the embalming fluid settle down in the body. However the body was in open air for three days only after a concern was expressed that people in Malawi were waiting.
The finding of the pathologists was that the cause of the death of President Bingu was cardiac arrhythmia (irregular beating of the heart) leading to cardiac arrest.
Clinically, he was dead on April 5 2012 in Malawi.
Officially, he died on April 7 2012 in South Africa.
THE FINAL ACT:
It was the wish of the family to embalm the body for a period of 100 years. The embalmers however advised that it was not possible to proceed along those lines and advised that they could only do embalming for 40 to 45 years.
So 40 to 45 years is what he got.
BUT THEN:
When the body was flown to Malawi on 14th April, it had to be re-embalmed because the process was not properly done in SA.
And a carpenter had to be found to fix the casket, which was falling apart in places.
The casket was a donation by the South African govern.
... Part 3, the political power plays, Vice President Joyce Banda must be blocked, she must not ascend to power.
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