Mizere Re-Elected in Malawi
By Douglas C. · Sat, 31 Oct 2026
After Mpilo Mizere’s re-election as Chessam president, former president Kezzie Msukwa is urging Malawi chess to heal and let the vote divide no one.
The votes are counted, the winners are known, and now comes the part nobody puts on a ballot paper: living together afterwards. In Malawi, that is the question facing the Chess Association of Malawi, known as Chessam, after Mpilo Mizere secured a second consecutive term as president. And one of the people who knows the federation best has a clear answer about what should happen next.
Bring everyone in
Kezzie Msukwa ran Chessam for 14 years before stepping aside in 2018, and he has been congratulating the winners with a plea attached. The campaign is over, he argues, and the wounds it left should be allowed to close. His main demand is aimed at the man at the top. Mizere's biggest job, Msukwa says, is not just to lead the people who backed him but to bring in those who ran against him and those who feel let down. Listen to them, he urges. Value what they offer. Make sure no one feels discarded.
He has a message for ordinary members too. Whoever they supported, they should get behind the new team, offer advice that is useful and judge the leadership on what it does. Criticism has its place, he says, as long as it builds something. His summary is hard to improve on: the election chose the leadership, but it must not divide the membership.
A voice with history
Msukwa speaks with some authority. He led Chessam from 2004 to 2018, and he has since held a string of roles in international chess: a former FIDE zone president, a former member of FIDE's Electoral Commission and its Constitution Commission, and a former secretary general of the Africa Chess Confederation. Malawi's Nyasa Times reported in 2018 that he was serving as a FIDE electoral commissioner when delegates in Batumi elected Arkady Dvorkovich president, and that he won the continental secretary general post that October.
A tense road to the vote
That background helps explain why he is asking for calm, because the weeks before the election were anything but. At the start of October, Nyasa Times described a bitter row between Mizere and Susan Namangale, who had also led the association. Namangale said Chessam refused to back her campaign for a FIDE vice presidency, in which she collected 58 votes and finished fifth. Mizere defended the decision, saying her tactics had stirred up friction among African chess officials and that he had offered to reconsider if she toned things down. She, in turn, questioned whether withdrawing support was official policy or his own call.
Mark Ndipita, who was seeking the presidency, added to the pressure by criticizing what he called one-man decision-making at the top, and promised to change how Chessam handles matters that affect Malawi's standing in world chess. Those were the accounts of the people involved, and none of it has been independently verified.
What comes next
Details of the vote itself, including the date, the margins and the full list of winners, have not been widely reported. What is plain is the mood Msukwa hopes to set. A federation that has just been through a hard contest has a choice between carrying the grudges forward and spending its second term building something. He has made clear which he prefers, and the next few months will show whether Chessam agrees.
