Aborting the Bill and the Cartel

 

by the Venomous Hope

Returning to this esteemed pulpit always gives me pleasure, the doc who owns it has kindly allowed me [again] muckrake a few issues. It is perhaps high time I grant myself the greatest honour, the moniker of ‘permanent guest’, now that this is beyond my 10^th article on this forum. Writing an expose for an audience that speaks very good overseas English can be painstakingly demanding, I will have to remind myself to make an effort to find out whatever the Rich eats every Friday, I am reliably told there’s always a secret recipe in chiwaya chapa Chitawira. I have to confess though that it is more stressful to come up with an introduction, never mind a good one. It is why these few sentences are as good as you can get.

The hot potato these past two weeks has been the so-called Abortion Bill, and when you sniff your radio for just some seconds you can’t avoid meeting some sort of experts on the subject, trying to outdo each other in one way or the other, for different causes and income. The bill has pitted, I must say, health specialists and Civil Society Organizations (SCOs) on the one hand, and religious gurus and some ‘concerned prospective fathers’ on the other. The proponents of the Bill want to legalize safe abortion because of unaccounted number of complications that come because many girls and women keep trying to cut corners to get rid of the unborn child. For them, they want health practitioners to take charge of the process, and in a way, to save the mothers. The facts are bare for our perusal: for starters, alarming figures that WHO reports hover around 56 million abortions performed per year on earth alone, the number can be twice higher on planet Titan now that the mad Thanos is dead. And in 2005 alone, some healthy ministry officials revealed that 67, 000 induced abortions were recorded in the country, this is very bad if that’s the trend. Flipping through some of the reasons why women resort to abortion, one may be tempted to conclude that beyond the curtain the problem has been social-cultural and ultimately more about our poverty levels, paja Chakwera has inherited APM’s role of leader of the least deveLoOped countries. Well some of the reasons include: desire for girls to stay in school (really?); extramarital pregnancy (majority of the cause); kuchembeza mwachangu wina asanasiye kuyamwa; pregnancy from incest, defilement and rape; and of course poverty.

Some of those reasons are well-intentioned and it may be tempting to join the bandwagon of safe abortion activism along the way. It must be said, however, reading the Bill itself, that not every pregnant soul will have a free pass for abortion. Termination of pregnancy will only “be necessary to prevent injury to the physical or mental health of a pregnant woman” and also in cases that there is malformation of the foetus, or if it endangers the life of the pregnant mother. The grey area that has produced a lot of misinterpretations is probably the so-called mental health, which is fast becoming a popular card that even our friend Chisale tried to use in order to end his ordeal at Maula Prison. The Bill, according to some experts, is just trying to correct some healthy risks and make it as safe as possible for our dear women and girls.

Well one may ask if most of the religious inspired opponents of the bill have read it with sober mind, mwina sanawerengenso nkomwe. The flawed statement that the country is a God-fearing nation has resurfaced, well with much voluminous venom. Of course it’s a fact that almost every soul in the country profess to a Higher Being of some sort, the following subtle numbers give a candid reflection: Malawi has an estimated 23% Catholics, 29% Protestants [Anglicans, CCAP & Lutherans], 10% are Muslims, others [rastas, Amboni, Pentecostals, and humanists] make up at least 25%. Unsurprisingly, all the who is who of religious bodies in the country have ganged up to put pressure on the MPs to reject the Bill at whatever cost, no discussion or compromises. We all know that these religions are not only Abrahamic and foreign, but are also idealistic in that the doctrine is as powerful as the law of the land. For the most Christians, including yours truly, the infinite strands of moral compass are absolute and non-negotiable in as far as a future life in paradise is concerned. Tragedy will be the time when religion will be proved to be one large conspiracy and a lie all along… Well gods exist so we have to bring the fight to them, so they say. A blunt example of an absolute truth held by Christians migrated from Bible at Exodus 20:3 which reads, “You shall not murder.” It is one of the popular verses making rounds in defense of those who oppose Abortion Bill, you cannot justify any killing whatsoever even if the foetus is only a minute old. And the following the catalogue of some references you will hear throughout the debate:

-Jeremiah 1:5- before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart, I appointed you as prophet to the nations.

-Qur’an 5:32: whosever has spared life of a soul it is as though he has spared the life of all people. Whosever has killed a soul, it is as though he has murdered all mankind.

-Qur’an 17:32: Kill not your offspring for fear of poverty, it is we who provide for them and for you. Surely, it is a great sin,

I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. Pope John Paul II, Evaangelium Vitae, 1995.

I will not dwell much on the demerits of these, but for the sake of progress, the abortion bill is a positive aspect for the wellbeing of a Malawian woman for the sole reason that it is meant to provide for the safe termination of the pregnancy. As a country, we should mend the behaviour of the citizenry so that the pregnancy procured is cared for and mutually accepted “mentally” [whatever it may mean]. In principle, we should as a country be working more on the social-cultural problems that force women, and especially girls, to fall pregnant, all how we can rid the country of bandits who go about raping women in our villages. It is a fact that these religious groups have failed short on the moral duty on shaping the society to reach the godly standards they aspire for us; they have done little to impart moral thrust into their faithful. Most importantly, abortion bill answers the same critical dilemmas that religion fails to, you remember those exceptions that will allow women to abort? My thoughts on the Bill have summarized in this statement made by one Stanley Hauerwas:

It may be that issues such as abortion are finally not susceptible to intellectual solution. I do not mean to suggest that we cease trying to formulate the problem in the most responsible manner possible, but rather that, our best recourse may be to watch how good men and women handle the tragic alternative we often confront in abortion situations. For no amount of ethical reflection will ever change the basic fact that tragedy is a reality of our lives.  Point is reached where we must have the wisdom to cease ethical reflection and affirm that certain issues indicate a reality more profound than the ethical.

[Message from Richie: Take a water break here.]

Talking about more profound real ethical issue, our dear honourable souls at the National Assembly felt like their libido has been emotionally bruised beyond repair this week when revelations that up to 10, 000 condoms are consumed every month. Haha! 10, 000 condoms per month. Funny that they also do care more about their reputation when embarrassing issues like these come to light. And some MPs struggled to justify the high number of intake for the commodity saying it is not only them lining up to get the rubber but also other stakeholders, viz: journalists, constituency visitors, and staff members, and of course official capital concubines; it is them who frequent the handout desk and they have tarnished their image by collecting the condoms en masse. Some even went to town to demand an immediate apology, withdraw of the inaccurate statement, and the speedy sacking of the one who released those holy findings. I am struggling to see why they are fuming with anger when it is Parliament itself that procures condoms on our taxes for free distribution during any sittings; it just shows they are in on the act. Kapena amafuna akananenera mwanseri. 99% of the MPs have wives/husbands that normally follow them on the television back in their villages, but a large cartel of concubines also usually follows whenever they are back in the capital. Its hot business such that those hefty allowances need to be shared. As long as it helps them to actively participate in the debate we cannot blame them for wanting more of flesh of Bwandiro.

On a final note, it looks like the DPP has now come to their senses to take the responsibility of opposing the government. A cat and mouse fight, however, for the position of leader of opposition (LoOp) has degenerated into a civil war within the once mighty party such that a day doesn’t elapse before you hear dirty linen being smeared in media among the remaining party cadres. Many people have spoken of the need for self-cleansing in the party so that they may regain even a tiny fraction of the trust they had with the people of their stronghold, the Lomwe belt, and these tags of wars are not helping because it seems not everyone is willing to let the process of healing permeate within the rank and file. It has become a party that doesn’t understand its own constitution, yet they have a president who is a professor emeritus of law. After some sanity, the secretariat decided to grant the wish its remaining 50+ MPs to conduct an impromptu election on LoOp, and APM had a rude awakening as a result. APM’s adopted son Francis Kasaila, who still has a pending case on the legitimacy of his parliamentary win in 2019 at the High Court, was soundly defeated when MPs opted for Kondwani Nankhumwa to carry on as LoOp despite the hierarchy creating various news snippets meant to undermine his rise to power. Kasaila got a mere 4 votes against Nakhumwa’s 38. And another big wig, Bright Msaka, the party’s vice president in the East, was nominated and even had a secondment, but he only got a single vote {he voted himself}, perhaps the nominators changed their mind midway during the voting. When we thought that dust has settled, the party publicist Brown Mpinganjira spoke on radio saying that it is the party that elects the LoOp and not the Mps so what happened in parliament was an anomaly that will be corrected when the inner circle meet.

Nankhumwa may have won the battle yesterday; it will take sacrifices to be universally accepted as the de facto leader of DPP as long as APM is still pulling the strings at his retirement Lodge in Mangochi. At this rate, DPP will never wrestle back the power of running the affairs of this country, anaonongera pa mpando. And I personally am not convinced with the caliber of successors within the party, including Nankhumwa himself. So far, the front runners to succeed APM at the convention [Mpinganjira says in 5yrs time] include Nankhumwa, Uladi Musa, George Chaponda, Msaka, and Kasaila. Chakwera or Chilima will not even need to do campaign to soundly defeat the lot. When we say we need new blood we don’t mean Nankhumwa, he has never for starters accepted that the chaos created by his party when in power brought the country on its knees in the last couple of years. And to quote one letter from other party NGC inviting him to a party disciplinary hearing, “he must come forward to explain his education background.” Ha! Come on, this was a good opportunity for him to show he was the grain among the chaff in DPP.

Going forward however, the party needs serious rebranding. They should wean themselves from anything to do with the Mutharikas, the so-called NGC members should gang up and force APM to give up power so that he pours some energy in his remaining limbs to defending family friend Chisale on the large amounts of our taxes he accumulated on their behalf. I must say, they should also get rid of the old guard that have been surviving on the party for their daily bread and rentals. The cartel of advisors who have never won any public position other than serving the president with lies like Francis Mphepo; get rid over-recycled politicians like Chenji Golo, Ntaba, and Mpinganjira; remove from positions of influence politically compromised villains like Mchacha, Chaponda, and that bankrupt convict in the North, Reverend Nzomera Ngwira. Anyway, that job will never happen because APM still feels he is untouchable and has a say on the direction of the party.

Now that Nankhumwa has successfully negotiated his rise to LoOp [ultimately getting back to the salary scale of cabinet ministers], I expect him to unmask himself and become a character that can give hope so that the defeat in 2025 election will not be unequivocally embarrassing. Nankhumwa has always tried his best to avoid being embroidered in chaos, he uses his henchmen like Mchacha and one Victor Musowa to fight his battles. After a lot insulting at rally, he comes like an angel with a sober voice to bring message of unity. The only time he had come out of his shell he was soundly embarrassed by Chakwera at parliament for posing puerile questions. It’s a nice trick in politics, of playing the Virgin Mary character, but he will not connect well with the people because a lot of energy is wasted on trying to be as perfect as the heaven itself. Even if it is the real Nankhumwa, the shadow of his associates is a menace for the future of DPP, it is how the presidency is captured.

Thanks for reading folks, enjoy your weekend.