Malawi's new president: Rejoice, it's Joyce WHEN President Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi died suddenly last month, his successor was the daughter of a musician in a police brass band. That came as a shock. Indeed, some sought to prevent it. But Joyce Banda, Malawi's first female president and only the second in Africa after Liberia's Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has hit the ground running, combining a tough decisiveness with gentle charm and a promise of reform that has delighted almost everyone. Mr Mutharika had brought one of Africa's fragile but hopeful democracies almost to its knees. The 62-year-old former foreign minister and vice-president seems determined to rescue it. Mrs Banda has started well. She has fired Mr Mutharika's powerful police chief, blamed by some for the deaths of 20 anti-government demonstrators at the hands of police last July. The central bank's governor and the head of the state broadcasting company have also been sacked. She has resumed talks with the IMF over a new loan, pledged to devalue the currency by 40%, agreed to resume full diplomatic relations with Britain, Malawi's biggest donor and former colonial ruler, and ordered an official inquiry into the suspicious suicide of a student pro-democracy activist. She has appointed a government that includes representatives of all the main opposition parties as well as members of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). To the dismay of some civil-rights people, many of whom suffered sorely under her predecessor, she has called for reconciliation. Mrs Banda was expelled from the DPP in late 2010 after criticising Mr Mutharika's appointment of his brother, Peter, as his heir apparent, but she stayed on as vice-president, with a constitutional right to take over if the president became incapable or died. A number of Mutharika loyalists tried to block her ascent after the president's death, on the dubious ground that she was no longer a member of the ruling party. For two days Malawians were kept in the dark about their president's demise as the plotters sought to seize power on behalf of Peter wa Mutharika. Only when the army refused to back him, prompting a stream of dissident DPP MPs to back Mrs Banda's recently formed People's Party, did the plotters give up. The pity was that Mr Mutharika had done well in his first term, from 2004 to 2009, notably with a farm-subsidy plan that turned famine-prone Malawi into a net food exporter. The economy grew by more than 6% a year. Malawi was one of just four countries in sub-Saharan Africa thought likely to meet most of the UN's millennium development goals by 2015. Malawians rewarded the former president, then 75, by voting him back into power in 2009 with a two-thirds majority. But then things began to sour. Some say success went to his head. Others blame a difficult second marriage. There were whispers of drinking, drugs taken for cancer or diabetes, even dementia. He became increasingly arrogant and unpredictable, making an array of enemies, including the IMF and foreign donors, who accounted for about 20% of GDP and 40% of the budget. Last June the IMF froze further disbursements of a promised $79m loan, after Malawi failed to meet its conditions. Foreign donors, already rattled by the expulsion of Britain's ambassador in April 2011 for calling Mr Mutharika "ever more autocratic and intolerant," suspended direct budget support. Exports of tobacco, the economy's mainstay, dived. A foreign-currency crisis led to severe shortages of fuel, imported food and spare parts. With only three of her own MPs in the 193-seat parliament, Mrs Banda has persuaded the African Development Bank to pledge $45m in budget support. Zambia and South Africa have donated fuel. But this will tide the country over for only a month or so. Western donors may now resume budget support, but cash is unlikely to arrive much before the end of the year. Meanwhile, Malawians may grow impatient as queues lengthen at petrol stations, farmers clamour for fuel to work their irrigation pumps, and companies continue to go bust for want of imported supplies. Mrs Banda has a mountain to climb.