Nigeria, April 20 -- On the evening of 5 April 2012, the prime-time bulletin on the television news of the Malawi Broacasting Corporation (MBC), announced to the country that the president, Ngwazi Professor Bingu wa Mutharika, "had.taken ill and had been flown to South Africa for specialist treatment." At another end of the capital city, Lilongwe, a presidential convoy was on its way to the Kamuzu International Airport (KIA), where an air ambulance awaited with instructions to fly a president who was supposedly alive but unwell to South Africa.

Earlier in the day, around 11:00 in the morning, Ngwazi Bingu had collapsed while receiving in audience the Member of Parliament representing the south-east constituency of the capital city, Lilon...