Steeped in cultural beliefs which experts cite as helping to promote early child marriages and sexual reproductive health problems, Machinga is one of the districts in the country with a profile that is tilted towards a development concern.
Here, child marriages are almost a way of doing things.
The man is in charge and his word is gospel –not to be questioned.
This has been a way of life for ages.
And to have religious and traditional leaders who are convinced that they have the responsibility to champion efforts that seek to change the status quo –for a better, more progressive society –may be something close to impressive.
That is why people like Sheikh Abubakar Ligomeka stand out. Ligomeka is not an ordinary religious leader. He is an ambitious Muslim scholar who wants all social injustices and violations of sexual reproductive health rights to be rooted out of his community.
“We want our girls to be able to read and write and be in school. In this area we will not tolerate early marriages; we have the full support from Chief Kawinga,” says Sheikh Ligomeka who is also fluent in Arabic, English and Latin.
Ligomeka belongs to an influential taskforce in the area of Senior Chief Kawinga whose aim is to tackle the ills that have held back many its young people, especially girls, and the society at large back from progress.
The task force is one of the initiatives of the Nayuchi Aids Network Services (Nanes), a local organisation in Ntaja area.
With support from Tilitonse Fund, Nanes is engaging stakeholders such as traditional leaders, religious leaders, mother groups, Village Development Committees, Area Development Committee and authorities from the Machinga District Commissioner’s office in the mission to transform the society.
The task force, which comprises 60 traditional leaders and religious leaders, among others, and was formed in April 2015, wants to champion a new thinking over long-held cultural and traditional practices that have made the area stuck in the wheels of underdevelopment.
“As religious and traditional leaders we have formed this taskforce to reduce early marriages, teenage pregnancies and maternal deaths,” says Ligomeka.
To aid its work, the team has gone on to formulate by-laws that ban traditional birth attendants and early marriages. Already, the taskforce is chalking off results. Through its efforts, 11 child marriages have been dissolved so far and the involved boys and girls have returned to school.
Ligomeka is confident that by implementing the by-laws they have formulated, lives of girls inthe area will be transformed in terms of increasing literacy rates. He says most of the girls who end up in early marriages in the area cannot read or write.
Group Village Headman Suwedi is chairperson of the taskforce. He says the area needs to improve in girl child education as this is the only way to reduce early marriages and ensuring better socio-economic status of girls and women.
“We saw that there was a huge problem with early marriages, so Nanes asked Senior Chief Kawinga to have a task force in place. These by-laws have brought huge change,” says Suwedi.
Between November 2012 and March 2014, Nanes also implemented a youth-targeted HIV and Aids project in the same area.
According to a documentation of best practices following that project, the organisation found that youths can be a powerful force in beating culturally-entrenched norms and adult conservatism.
It also established that religious perceptions and cultural traditions – often named among significant agents in the transmission of HIV and Aids in Malawi –are liable to giving way to a community-driven, pro-active and multi- partner advocacy strategies.
The project also brought to the fore that youth-targeted activities can actually attract involvement of adults and community leaders in as much as the objectives of the activities are deemed to be for the betterment of the larger community. This meant removing the veil of secrecy surrounding issues of sexuality as had been the tradition in the district.
Asked in that documentation about how it felt to take a leading role in breaking some of the cultural values in which he had grown up himself and which he, as traditional leader, was supposed to uphold, Suwedi was blunt.
“I don’t care about upholding culture if that means people dying needlessly. Because of cultural beliefs and practices, people were contracting Aids and were not going to hospital for treatment. We were dealing with death almost on daily basis. There was little time for personal and community development as we spent much of it either burying the dead, both the young and old, or caring for the sick.
“We believed issues of sex were not subjects for public discussion and in frank terms. There was no way we would discuss sexuality issues with young people openly. We lacked knowledge on how to deal with the crisis before us,” Suwedi said.
It is because of such background that Malawi has ranked as one of those having the highest rates in child marriages, among other social ills.
The 2014 Human Rights Watch Report ranked Malawi eighth out of the 20 countries that were considered to have the highest rates of child marriage in the world.
On average, one out of two girls in Malawi will be married by their eighteenth birthday, according to the United Nations.
In 2010, 50 percent of women aged 20 to 24 years were married or in union before age 18 (compared to 6.4 percent of boys); while 12 percent of women married before they were 15 compared to only 1.2 percent of men.
Human Rights Watch therefore called for the Malawi government to take immediate and long-term measures to protect girls from child and forced marriage and ensure the fulfilment of their human rights, in accordance with its international human rights obligations.
“Reforms are needed now to mitigate the far-reaching harms of child marriage and its negative implications for Malawi’s future development,” reads in part of the report.
Small and community-driven measures like the one in Senior Chief Kawinga’s area are proving to be a way to go.
“We have completely banned all traditional birth attendants from making deliveries, instead women who are in labour are encouraged to seek attention of skilled birth attendants at health facilities as one way of reducing maternal deaths,” says Group Village Headman Mbandulira.
Although Malawi enacted the Marriage, Divorce and Family Relations Bill into law that has increased marriage age to 18, community leaders in Machinga demand more awareness for parents and communities at large
Leave a Reply