Anachronisms and Empty Echoes: The Epistemic Collapse of Moses Mnthakomwa’s Testimony

Anachronisms and Empty Echoes

There is a vital jurisprudential warning: true and reliable testimony cannot exist in a vacuum. It must be triangulated. To accept a claim blindly is an insult to reason; we must actively labor to verify it, testing it rigorously against falsehood, accuracy, truth, and illusion.

When a witness demands that we “trust a speaker for the truth,” they enter a sacred second-personal contract of epistemic dependence. This week, during the inquiry into the tragic June 10, 2024, plane crash, UTM-affiliated witness Moses Mnthakomwa fundamentally breached that contract. His testimony failed the triangulation test and then proceeded to collapse under the weight of its own internal anachronism.

Mnthakomwa claimed under oath that he received a phone call at 20:19 hours from his friend, Major General Msonthi (now retired), who allegedly informed him that the missing plane had already been found. When pressed on why he sat on this monumental piece of information, Mnthakomwa’s defense was as swift as liquid ejection emerging between the muscles that we use to sit. He claimed he placed more weight on what the then President had said than what he heard from his military friend. In his telling, the President had already addressed the nation to inform them that the plane was still missing, and so Mnthakomwa chose to believe his Commander-in-Chief.

It is a neat, patriotic narrative, until you look at a clock. As Dedza Kasina cautiosly reminded the panel, the President did not make that national address until roughly 23:00 hours of that day. Mnthakomwa is asking the public to believe that at 20:19 hours, he made a conscious decision to ignore a phone call based on an address that would not happen for another two and a half hours.

This is a massive information blackhole. It is a chronological impossibility that exposes either a deliberate falsehood or a profound illusion. You cannot evaluate a past event based on future knowledge. By failing the basic test of timeline accuracy, the credibility of Mnthakomwa’s entire testimony evaporates.

Furthermore, without triangulating this hearsay against the source itself, the Chair’s upholding of this peace of evidence is telling a sad story. Until, perhaps, Msonthi comes forward to testify and corroborate Mnthakomwa’s testimony, it remains untested piece of evidence that cannot afford a secured conclusion. If the primary source is yet to testify to that remark, and the secondary source bases his actions on a presidential speech that hadn’t happened yet, what are we left with?

We are left with empty hearsay. Mnthakomwa’s testimony fails to inform a reasonable belief because it refuses to map onto reality. In a matter as grave as a fatal state plane crash, our collective grief demands truth, not temporal paradoxes and unverified rumors.

And Nyamilandu’s verdict that followed this testimony is, seriously, prematurely born and exposes his dangerous inclination. The gold standard of any independent commission of inquiry is radical, unblinking neutrality. A chairperson is not a prosecutor hunting for a specific villain, nor is he a screenwriter looking for a dramatic plot twist. A chairperson is a custodian of facts. Unfortunately, Walter Nyamilandu’s recent conduct as head of the Ad Hoc Committee of Inquiry suggests he has abandoned the robes of an objective arbiter in favor of a dangerous, preconceived script.

The moment Moses Mnthakomwa finished delivering his chronologically impossible, unverified hearsay testimony, an objective chairperson would have noted the staggering timeline contradictions. Instead, Mr. Nyamilandu was visibly ecstatic. In a move that shocked onlookers, he passed a premature, glowing preliminary verdict: “Now we have started receiving tangible evidence.”

The subtext of that statement is as damning as it is revealing. By declaring this specific, deeply flawed testimony as the first piece of “tangible evidence,” Nyamilandu effectively insulted every previous expert witness, technical report, and factual submission the committee had spent weeks gathering. More importantly, he exposed a confirmation bias so profound it threatens to delegitimize the entire inquiry.

Why would a chairperson celebrate a piece of hearsay evidence that was instantly debunked by simple timeline cross-examination? The answer lies in the dark hypotheses this committee seems desperate to manufacture. There appears to be a politically combustible inclination by the Chair and certain witnesses to guide the public toward two horrifying conclusions: either that the occupants of the plane were alive after the crash and deliberately left to die, or that they survived the initial impact and were subsequently assassinated. This narrative is precisely why the committee has spent so much time fixating on the alleged “tampering” of SIM cards.

While SIM cards must absolutely be analyzed by cyber-forensics experts and independent telecom engineers, they are currently being used by the Chair as a theatrical prop to hint at a grand conspiracy. Nyamilandu’s elation at Mnthakomwa’s testimony reveals that he isn’t looking for the truth of how the plane crashed; he is looking for any narrative, no matter how flimsy or riddled with falsehoods, that fits a pre-baked conclusion of foul play.

When the chairperson of an inquiry begins to treat un-triangulated rumors as “tangible evidence” simply because it feeds a sensationalist hypothesis, we must openly question his competence and his motives. This inquiry owes the the nation a rigorous, scientific, and logical accounting of the tragedy. If Mr. Nyamilandu continues to let his dangerous inclinations drive this committee, he will not deliver justice. He will deliver a manufactured fiction that permanently damages the fabric of our nation.