By Moses Michael-Phiri
BLANTYRE, Malawi
The government of Malawi says it is slowly winning the fight against gender-based violence in the landlocked southeastern African country.
"There is a lot of progress," Patricia Kaliati, minister for gender and child welfare, told The Anadolu Agency in an interview.
"But we want men to do more to stop violence," she said.
Police spokesperson Rhoda Manjolo expects gender-based violence figures to gradually decline.
"From January to September [of this year], we registered 9,842 cases [of gender-based violence]," Manjolo told AA.
Malawi has been collecting data on the phenomenon through various police victim-support units located across the country.
In 2011, there were 24,915 cases reported nationwide, a figure that rose to 29,488 the following year.
However, in 2013, Malawi registered only 15,601 cases – almost half the cases registered the previous year.
The significant decline has been attributed to vigorous public-awareness campaigns carried out by the government and its development partners, in cooperation with community leaders and other stakeholders.
According to the authorities, women and children constitute Malawi's most abused groups.
In September, a woman was admitted to Kamuzu Central Hospital in capital Lilongwe after her husband chopped off her hand following a dispute.
Soflet Kagwa, 39, and Gilbert Falawo, 40, had been married nearly 20 years – and had six children between them – when they fought over sheathes of grass that are commonly used for roofing in rural parts of Malawi.
Improving
The declining numbers have come as a relief for many Malawians. Gender-based violence has remained rife in the country since multiparty democracy triumphed over the one-party rule of president Hastings Kamuzu Banda in 1994.
As a result of poor security, cases of sexual abuse, of rape, of men killing their wives – and, sometimes, of women castrating their husbands – had risen since Banda's departure.
"During the one-party state, women were protected and highly respected," prominent Malawian historian and author Desmond Dudwa Phiri told AA.
"Kamuzu protected women, calling them 'my mbumba,' meaning he was the custodian of all Malawian women," he said.
Phiri recalled that, during the Kamuzu era, a man would not dare beat a woman. Even husbands could not lay a hand on their wives for fear of reprisals from Kamuzu loyalists.
"But during the multiparty dispensation, women were used and abused," Phiri claimed. "Even the political system is using women to win votes."
"And at home," he added, "women face so many challenges hindering their education, human rights, personal development and right to life."
More needed
Minister Kaliati, for her part, said her ministry was striving to raise educational standards for women and girls with a view to alleviating their plight.
"More needs to be done to fully eliminate this vice [gender-based violence] from our society," she told AA. "I believe education for our girls is key to this fight."
She added: "We support girls who have made good grades but who have not been selected for tertiary education, a program Malawi is carrying out in collaboration with the 'UN Women' organization."
Information Minister Kondwani Nankhumwa also believes women's education is essential to reducing the burdens inflicted by gender-based violence.
"When women are educated, it helps them distinguish those coming to them with honest intentions from those coming to deceive them," Nankhumwa said.
"Most of the time, when you aren't educated as a woman, you can't make informed decisions and you can fall victim to domestic violence," the minister added.
Minister Kaliati, meanwhile, said that Malawi, in collaboration with the UN – through a program dubbed "He for She" – hoped to drum up male support for the country's women.
She went on to praise men who had already begun supporting their spouses with a view to advancing their education.
David Odali heads the Umunthu Foundation, an NGO that is not only offering programs to end gender-based violence, but is also challenging stereotypes by encouraging men to actively combat the trend.
"Men have to become involved because of cultural attitudes that assume male superiority," Odali told AA.
Odali said that a variety of factors continued to fuel gender-based violence in Malawi. One of these, he said, was the fact that women sometimes encouraged men to be violent.
"Some victimized women will bail the man who has abused them out of prison, while others encourage their brothers to torture their wives if they don't like the wives," Odali explained.
"We also have women in our society who fail to report abuses to police or report that they are in abusive relationships," he added.
Odali, however, contends that men too often suffer in silence, pretending that nothing is wrong when, in fact, they are being abused by their wives.
"We want all these people to learn to speak out," he asserted.
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