In 2014, it was clear that the tenets of women empowerment were in place in Malawi. That time, I was working for an organisation that prides itself in promoting the rights of women. The conditions were perfect, Malawi had a female incumbent who was seeking a mandate of the people of Malawi, having ascended to the throne of power by circumstances that were beyond human control. The statistics had consistently shown that women were the majority in Malawi; it was, therefore, a mere formality that a woman incumbent should find it easy to maintain power. The irony of it is that, in most political rallies, there are more women than men. The question of women participation in politics in Malawi is as old as history itself; it is the lack of women in leadership position that does not seem to make sense. Traditionally, it is women who vigorously participate in the political process of mobilising, registering, campaigning and voting. They do so on behalf of male candidates in the larger part.<\/p>\n
Human rights organisations like the one I was working for had put in massive amounts of resources to ensure that women representation in all spheres of politics was enhanced. Before the elections, the number of female legislators in the Malawi Parliament was 43. After massive amounts of resources were put into the system by the likes of the organisation I was working for and donors like the Norwegian Embassy in Lilongwe, which went flat out through the NGO-GCN to mobilise women candidates for the various positions, the number of women elected to Parliament actually went down to 32 from the previous number of 43. What went wrong? Was this a confirmation that the role of women in Malawi is restricted to dancing and singing for their male counterparts? Shouldn\u2019t the role of women in politics in Malawi go beyond dancing?<\/p>\n
In 2018, there is another campaign to promote the participation of women in politics beyond dancing, but have lessons been learnt from the flop of 2014? It is na\u00efve to assume that merely having more women candidates will translate into more women being elected. The campaign to promote women candidature in Malawi cannot be effective outside political party structures. While the ideal situation would have been that people vote for candidates based on their individual attributes, the majority of the voters in Malawi do not really care about the individual as they care about the party that the individual represents at election time. Should the campaign, therefore, not be focused on the intra party processes of selecting candidates?<\/p>\n
I do understand that need to be innovative and follow the technological advancements. But, surely, in a country where less than 10 percent of the population has access to internet, where the majority rellies on organisations\u2019 networks to connect to the internet and where charges for internet connections are among the highest in the world, it is restrictive to ask those women to register their applications for support in the 50-50 campaign through email? Is that not being elitist? How many of the self-starters, committed women in rural Malawi, will find time to send an email. While it is commendable to promote women, it should be remembered that this should not be at the expense of favouring the more elite and able women who, in most cases, do not even need the support. This apathy towards women is not new nor surprising, there is apathy towards women\u2019s rights due to the male dominant narrative in Malawi politics. There is a common belief, that \u2018ng\u00f3mbe yaikazi sikoka ngolo\u2019. This belief has permeated through all segments of society and is echoed by talk show hosts and armchair critics alike. This flawed logic only results in silencing women.<\/p>\n
Until political parties and institutions stop using tokenism in an attempt to placate women\u2019s right\u2019s activists all the while maintaining the status quo, nothing will change. Is it by accident that the main spokespersons for the 50-50 campaign are men? Most mainstream parties have barely appointed a handful of women in the reserved seats to give the illusion of welcoming women\u2019s voices. This rests on the idea that one Kaliati, or Kabwila or Lunguzi can accurately represent all women, which then paves the way for \u2018the incompetence of one woman is the incompetence of all women\u2019.<\/p>\n
The campaign should move beyond numbers. Elections and women issues in Malawi are complex. It is na\u00efve to assume that merely being a woman ensures that one would have the relevant legal and political knowledge to effectively fight battles for them. Similarly, not all women are interested in advocating for women\u2019s rights. If their political position is conditional on blind support for the respective party\u2019s chauvinist policies, then even female parliamentarians have no choice but to pander to that.<\/p>\n
Assuming that women are empowered to advocate women\u2019s rights because they hold public office is to ignore the facts. Women fight other women for political positions. This is beyond solidarity. The power matrix of most of the political parties in Malawi are full of regional, sexism, ethnic and tribal trigonometry, which make political parties to be dominated by male leaders who tend to the party and subjugate the others. Any voice of reason, or difference of opinion, is easily labelled as \u2018nkholokolo\u2019.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, it would be helpful to understand the context of the political environment before transplanting campaigns that have worked somewhere and thereby push for equal and fair representation of women divorced from the current political climate. More work needs to be done, more thinking needs to go into the strategies. It is not too late. There is no disputing the fact that this country needs more women to participate in the electoral process, that the misogynistic myths need to be dismantled and that structures that protect men in politics, and yet do not protect and empower female parliamentarians, should be reengineered. Otherwise, the political role of women in Malawi politics will not move beyond dancing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 2014, it was clear that the tenets of women empowerment were in place in Malawi. That time, I was working for an organisation that prides itself in promoting the rights of women. The conditions were perfect, Malawi had a female incumbent who was seeking a mandate of the people of Malawi, having ascended to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67092","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=67092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67093,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67092\/revisions\/67093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}