Community leaders are pathological liars

When a few months ago I read: The genealogy of corruption in Malawi by Augustine Musopole I thought here is a brilliant framework for an appreciation of the genesis of Malawi’s fallen State

Why do Malawians lie so much?

I agree with Musopole that traditional training instills a sense of pragmatism of kuchenjera; that is being shrewd and not wopusa. With this people grow up not trusting anyone and afraid of being fooled. Rather than being honesty and open minded people become hypersensitive and too guarded.

Let us take the issue of  honesty.

Based on the teaching of ‘deny responsibility for everything’ if a young man found themselves responsible for pregnancy three morally objectionable actions will follow:

First they will not tell parents because ‘we don’t discuss sex, let alone pregnancies’ with parents. Second they will stick to ‘no responsibility’ for anything and rehearse their denial. And third they will abandon the girl.

Sadly, parents will typically advise denial of responsibility even if the young man chose responsibility because ‘taking responsibility’ would foolish.

How frightening this kind of teaching is!

Taking the pregnancy example, imagine how many girls’ lives have been ruined by this warped kuchenjera training. Imagine the stigma, the single-motherhood, the repudiation by society.

Siblings will be trained to stand by each other in anything. Each will dutifully swear before all known gods to protect a sibling even when it is in black and white that the sibling is the culprit.

Unfortunately, this is a process of internalising dishonesty early in life and sociologists warn us of how hard it is to change attitudes acquired in early ages.

Is it any wonder that children grow into adults still hiding things, defending the indefensible and failing to own up. Many people steer clear of duties and other activities in communities simply to avoid having to account.

How about the issue of theft?

Musopole suggests that in traditional training children tend to be taught to steal as long as they are not caught. But of course if they got caught they would deny it. Saving one’s skin is like a moral right, while admission or apology is inexcusable stupidity.

Well, consider how many ‘not guilties’ we have heard in the great Cashgate and how all are convicted so far. That’s the cost of engrained dishonesty. Eventually the more superior rational values catch up with you!

Traditional training is a ‘live and let die’ gospel which breeds negative competition and instils a daredevil parasitic culture so hard to curtail because it’s the majority culture. Unfortunately protecting one’s skin leads to pathological lying and hanging innocent people.

This kind of training de-sensitises and de-humanises people. Again Cashgate is the best example: the mega beneficiaries are at large as small operatives scorch in docks and jails.

Negative socialisation effectively suppresses truth. With ‘self-protection at any cost’ as the guiding philosophy how do we expect those who know what and who Cashgate really involved to testify?

Oswald Lutepo, upon being sentenced, called for honesty from those who knew about Cashgate to ‘speed up the trials and ease the pain of Malawians’. Perfectly noble, but who listened?  You see, it is not fear of becoming entangled; it is basically a live and let die position.

In nearly 20 years as HIV and Aids activist I heard how chiefs had stopped their subjects practising sexual cleansing ritual; how they had modified it to prevent HIV transmission.

Well nothing actually changed. What you now get from the same senior chiefs is that “the custom cannot stop” because it is cultural. Stupid culture now gets our President to answer awkward questions.

Our traditional leaders lied to protect extremely patriarchal values that reduce women to beasts of sexual burden.  They disregarded the cost to human life and do not respect the dignity of girls and women.

Sadly, all who have confessed widow cleansing are HIV positive and now they blame poverty.

The same can be said about initiation rites.

In the process of formulating Malawi’s first HIV and Aids Strategic Plan and Behaviour Change Strategy, I tried hard to establish if with chiefs and sheiks if old men indeed had sex with initiates.  The answer was a rehearsed no.

Well, they lied too, which is a big shame, coming from leaders.

Girls of 12 are sexually brutalised in the name of training and nobody seems bothered. It is true that such initiations drive many girls into early sex, early marriage and early childbearing. But they all deny it.

Clearly initiations are no better than formal school-based sex education which the same people violently reject in favour of abusing children. This is evil criminality.

But this is not just a girls’ yoke.

A surviving initiate now 70 years told me how he forcibly had sex with a ‘grandmother’ during initiation as part of practical pedagogy.

Where is umunthu in all this stone-age behaviour?

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