We live in a society that has always been known to be conservative and, as such, many are times we have chosen to look the other way, ignoring the elephant in the room. Behind our conservatism are so many moral and ethical labels that we have bestowed upon ourselves to make us believe that we are better than normal people. We think we have a Malawian culture that is just pure. We have our traditions that we do not want to lose to influences from the rest of the world. Above all, we are God-fearing. And just like that, we do not talk about what we ought to be talking about.
About a week ago, the media carried news that more than a thousand women sought treatment for complications that come after unsafe abortions in Zomba alone between the months of January and March. This number was recorded in public health facilities only, something that tells us that there may be more who sought help elsewhere. For somebody who believes they are a God-fearing Malawian, these statistics call for prayer and deliverance sessions to rid these women of sins of the flesh. To them, this is a sign that the devil is at work. And, indeed, you should see the comments under that post on Facebook. God-fearing Malawians often condemn and they have no time for logical assessment of situations.
For some of us who do not believe that Malawi is a God-fearing nation, the statistics are a cause for concern and perhaps a call to rethink what we want to believe is true about our society. The issue of abortion has been at the centre of debates for a while now and we seem to be arriving at the same conclusions that do not give us solutions. Several non-governmental organisations have called for the legalisation of abortion before in order to ensure the safety of women who are currently risking a lot to abort, but our society has largely frowned upon that. Religious leaders and other custodians of “Malawian culture” have led packs of people to speak against such suggestions.
The error in this is that it is against the facts on the ground. Over the years, statistics show that a lot of Malawian women are aborting, and unsafely so. Whether that is morally or ethically right or wrong is subject to each individual’s interpretation of the world, and we know very well that we see the world from different perspectives. However, our value judgements over abortion do not negate the fact that it is something that is taking place in our country. What would go wrong if those who choose to have abortions are allowed to do so safely and those whose beliefs regard abortion as murder are also allowed to keep their unwanted pregnancies? The fact of cosmopolitan societies is that we have to learn to live at peace with our differences.
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In our country, there are so many things we have decided to pretend are not happening when we know very well that they are facts of life. Abortion is just a tip of the iceberg, but we love to lie to ourselves on so many other things like premarital sex, adultery, theft, corruption, just to mention but a few. Because we do not want to acknowledge such things, we have ended up struggling to deal with very simple matters that only demand honesty and direct approaches. The fight against HIV/Aids and its accompanying stigma would have been history had we been honest with ourselves. We could have easily ended corruption had we accepted that we have more thieves than holy people in this country. And, so, the story goes.
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We, as a nation, needed to be a bit more mature and honest about ourselves. Being Malawian is just a label we got because of the misfortune of inhabiting this geographical space, but there is nothing special that puts us above the rest of humanity.
We are as human as any other person out there and we suffer from human weaknesses. We are moral, we are immoral. We are rational, we are irrational. If we are to deal with most of the problems that we face today, we must not live in denial of our reality. It was about time we embraced our vulnerabilities to find solutions to what ails us.
