How many of our girls have been told that a man must not be feared because even a cargo ship never sinks because of the amount of cargo it carries. What about the mantra that isakagwe ndege yoti imanyamula magalimoto (even planes are able to fly high with heavy cargo)? Show me one Cabinet Minister who is not aware of what I am saying and I will show you a pathological liar!<\/p>\n
According to a research done by a Malawian social scientist, Clement Bisai in 2004, people of Nsanje look up to fisi in a number of situations.<\/p>\n
Other triggers include: Chitayo (miscarriage\/abortion), \u00a0ngozi (if a clan member dies in an accident or commits suicide), Futete (still birth or birth of live twins if the babies come out legs first and not headlong), Moto (if a house catches fire) and Nyalumbi (performed by a grave digger).<\/p>\n
These rituals are carried out in a desperate attempt to drive away the demons that bring about such misfortunes. If you talk to girls and women from Nsanje, they will confess that they know the risks posed by these rituals but they have to do them for the sake of their families and clans.<\/p>\n
So these rituals are perpetrated in the belief of advancing greater good for society and not necessarily selfish reasons of a fisi.<\/p>\n
Not an ignorant societyThere is this strange tendency among most Malawians to portray people of Nsanje as backward. But literacy levels for Nsanje have always been high. For instance, a 1998 Malawi Population Census revealed that literacy levels in Nsanje were at 51.7 percent. Out of this, 54.9 percent were males while females accounted for 30.5 percent.<\/p>\n
Nsanje people are not even religiously ignorant. The 1998 survey, indicated 73.9 percent of people in Nsanje were Christians, 1.6 percent were Muslims, 3.7 percent belonged to other faiths while 20 percent had no religion.<\/p>\n
There is a frenzy of excitement over the directive by President Peter Mutharika to have Eric Aniva, a confessed hyena (sexual cleanser), from Nsanje, in a cage.<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, Malawians are reacting not because we are surprised and disgusted by Aniva\u2019s conduct but because we are embarrassed that the world has now known what we have been doing in hiding. Typically, most of us find it fashionable to throw stones at perceived deviants even before we understand the context of an issue.<\/p>\n
I bet that more than half of the people that have been condemning Aniva have neither read nor listened to the BBC interview.<\/p>\n
As has been said before, the local media has been writing about these stories since the dawn of plural politics and Aniva has been quoted and photographed without courting any trouble.<\/p>\n
But it is understandable because each one of us is trying to save face. We should not lose sight of the fact that Mutharika is a goodwill ambassador on the youth and other sectors and he, too, has to show his international sponsors that he is serious about youth and women protection and empowerment.<\/p>\n
Culture versus the global village The fisi culture is well entrenched in most of the tribes in Malawi.<\/p>\n
In Dedza, it had to take Inkosi Kachindamoto to personally fight the vice besides rescuing girls from early marriages. Before her initiative not much was done.<\/p>\n
In Karonga and other districts in the north, we have Kupimbira which entails betrothal of young girls by men. This is usually done when a girl\u2019s parents are failing to settle a debt with the man. As of now, the President and all of us are quiet, waiting for the BBC to tell us what we already know.<\/p>\n
Most Malawians think that Fisi is hired to perform kulowakufa (cleansing a widow) or kuchotsa fumbi (cleansing a girl who has reached puberty) only. By the way,<\/p>\n
kuchotsa fumbi is also rampant among tribes that take their girls through initiation (chinamwali). And in such cases, even religious leaders Feedback:ichitosi@bn all fairness, this picture is not so different from what obtains in most of the districts in the country.<\/p>\n
Sacrificial lamb It might be important to state that the National Aids Commission<\/p>\n
(Nac) Sentinel Surveillance Report of 2003 discovered that HIV prevalence was on the rise in the district. The prevalence rate rose from 21 percent in 1997 to 32.9 percent in 2003. The report recommended a scale-up in sensitisation among communities.\u00a0 The question is: Did that knowledge help us in addressing the cultural practices in Nsanje?<\/p>\n
Holistic approach It is totally inhumane for Malawi to deliver Aniva to the firing squad. If anything, we have to round up political and religious leaders as well as all the eight T\/As of the district. These are all accomplice to the crimes that Aniva, the hyena, has been committing.<\/p>\n
But all Malawians have been aware about the risky cultural practices, not only in Nsanje but also in the other districts. As such, President Mutharika should lead all of us into jail because we are part of this crime.<\/p>\n
If this sounds absurd, then arresting Aniva on such crime is utter nonsense.<\/p>\n
And to borrow the President\u2019s\u00a0 favourite line: this nonsense of pretending to be holier than Aniva must stop! What we need to do, as a nation, is to intensify behavioural change advocacy.<\/p>\n
We need to demystify issues of miscarriage, still births and the like. Our people must be redeemed from that bondage of fear.<\/p>\n
We know that we have so many Anivas in political and other leadership positions. Even the police officers who arrested Aniva also ask sex-workers who they arrest during sweeping exercises, to redeem themselves.<\/p>\n
Today, they are busy throwing stones at Aniva; not because he is a disgrace but because he has unmasked the nyau.<\/p>\n
Until we give our people something to do for a living, take away the unwarranted fear, use people like Aniva as change drivers, we have no business to arrest Aniva who is just a victim of circumstances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How many of our girls have been told that a man must not be feared because even a cargo ship never sinks because of the amount of cargo it carries. What about the mantra that isakagwe ndege yoti imanyamula magalimoto (even planes are able to fly high with heavy cargo)? Show me one Cabinet Minister […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29100,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29096\/revisions\/29100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}