The PAC-man chronicles: Ghostbusting with Colleen Zamba

It is truly heart-warming to witness the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament in such high spirits. In a world where logic often threatens to simplify our lives, PAC has bravely chosen the path of most resistance—and most confusion.

Their current obsession? A gripping romantic thriller starring Colleen Zamba and the Amaryllis Hotel. It’s a love story for the ages—or at least a legal one—where the facts are treated like unwanted guests at a victory party, left shivering outside while the committee dances with shadows.

The temporal superpowers of a retiree

To understand the sheer brilliance of this pursuit, one must first appreciate the timeline. Colleen Zamba, the former Secretary to the President and Cabinet (SPC), packed her bags and exited the stage on September 24 2025. This was the glorious day President Peter Mutharika was declared winner of the September 16 2025 presidential election, having secured a “handsome” 56.8 percent of the vote.

Since then, Zamba has presumably been enjoying the quiet life of someone who is no longer in charge of anything more complicated than a TV remote.

Yet, PAC seems to believe she possesses a temporal superpower: the ability to manifest government deals from the comfort of her retirement.

l The Exit: September 2025.

l The Deal: November 2025.

lThe Negotiations: Dragged into early 2026 to settle on that “modest pocket-change figure” of K128.75 billion.

But why let a small detail like “not being employed there anymore” stop a good interrogation? PAC is clearly operating on a higher plane of reality where employment contracts are merely suggestions and the laws of physics regarding time and space don’t apply to former SPCs.

The great freeze of 2025

The real comedy, however, lies in the Great Freeze. On October 7, the new government issued a stern decree: all contracts and procurements in State-Owned Enterprises (SoEs) were frozen. This was a sensible move to prevent the traditional Malawian pastime of “backdated contracts and illegal recruitment” during transitions.

The Department of Statutory Corporations even sent a follow-up memo on October 10, just to make sure everyone was listening. And yet, like a resilient weed in a manicured garden, the high-stakes Amaryllis deal blossomed right in the middle of this difficult environment.

If PAC were interested in the boring truth, they might ask: “Who in the current government kept the heater on for this specific deal?” or “Why did this transaction get a VIP pass through the freeze?” But that would involve talking to people who are actually in office. So, it’s much more theatrical to scream into the void for Colleen Zamba, who was long gone by the time the freeze was even a thought in a civil servant’s mind.

Adding a final layer of irony to this bureaucratic circus is the “steel barrier” of the judiciary. Zamba is currently involved in an ongoing court case regarding this very sale. She has quite reasonably dug in her feet, noting that she cannot participate in a parliamentary inquiry while the courts are still weighing the matter. In the world of the sane, this is called sub judice. It’s a standard legal boundary, but for PAC, it’s apparently just a hurdle to be jumped with a blindfold on.

In a fit of desperate creativity, PAC even asked the Legal Affairs Committee to use “everything in its power” to drag Zamba to the inquiry. One can only imagine what’s next—summoning her via a medium or perhaps an exorcism?

Logic? Never heard of her

If Zamba was gone in September, and the freeze was in October, how did she manage to influence the signing of the multi-billion-kwacha deal in November? Perhaps she is a phantom of clockwork and charm, magically engineered to slip through the electronic gaze of every lens, drift through steel and stone, and vanish with the secrets she seeks.Or perhaps PAC just misses her so much they’ve decided to invent reasons to keep her in the headlines.

If we are looking for someone to blame for the Amaryllis deal, perhaps we should look at the people who signed the papers while Zamba was at home watching the news. But no, let’s keep chasing the person who wasn’t there. It’s much more entertaining, and in the grand tradition of political theatre, the show must go on—even if the lead actress left the theatre months ago.

In the end, we must also salute the committee. It takes real talent to ignore a calendar this hard. While the rest of us are stuck in the linear flow of time, PAC is living in a multiverse where the past is the future, the retired are still working, and the facts are just suggestions.

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