The road to social and moral decay

Since the restoration of multiparty politics in 1993, some people claim the sort of rights which, if not regulated, can lead this country to social and moral decay.

Indiscipline is found everywhere—in the home, at work and in schools. From time to time, workers demand removal of a manager whose discipline they do not like. If the board refuses to do the employees bidding, the latter stage wildcat strikes.

We hear of students breaking school windows and destroying other school properties because the head teacher has not given them allowances of sorts, even if the head teacher himself/herself has not received the money from headquarters.

Crimes have multiplied, some of them gruesome such as removing a person’s organs and selling them as magic to those who want to become rich. You may read or hear today that the core criminals who have been at large for sometime have been apprehended at last and your family felt relieved. But it is too soon. News about robbers and murderers reaches you once more through the media or grapevine.

Economic  problems are the basis cause of the worsening crimes. But the liberalisation of punishment is partly to blame. If a referendum were held this month on the abolition or retention of the death sentence, most people would vote for the retention of the death sentence. But once a government or president resumes implementing death sentences and hanging condemned murderers, donors will start withholding their assistance from that country and its president.

In the days preceding the July 20 2011 street demonstrations, spokespersons of the DPP and its government were accusing organisers of the demonstrations of having received money from homosexual organisations overseas to promote or defend homosexuality in Malawi. Thousands of people, including my humble self, thought and believed that the DPP spokespersons had run out of steam and so were saying anything to discredit the opposition.

Nowadays, in one of the daily papers, regularly two men in an apparently sponsored advert vigorously defend the same-sex practice. They sometimes use uncivil language against those opposed to the practice. Obviously, there is a rich fellow abroad who wants to change our morals for the worse.

Indirectly, this person is assisted by those who want to obliterate religion in Malawi because they feel all believers are ignorant and superstitious. When those who did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah asked him to perform miracles, he refused. All the same, for service to humanity, he healed the chronically ill and raised the dead.

Those who say believers in religion are ignorant people would they please show us the scientific achievements that they have made. Anybody with a tongue can say ‘God is nowhere.’ This has been said for centuries, perhaps since religious societies started to form. The number of atheists and agnostics has always been smaller than that of believers.

The great French chemist Louis Pasteur, whose studies about microbes have benefited mankind, was in no doubt that there is deity. The mysteries of the world of when time started and where space begins and ends must puzzle whoever exerts his mind to think. Those who never bother about this question are not unique. Animals too, do not bother about the universe, they eat, drink, sleep and reproduce. That is all.

If a referendum were held today, whether to legalise homosexuality, most people would oppose the legalisation. Whenever homosexuals are punished, some donors will inflict heavy punishment on us by suspending their aid.

Does democracy not say that laws should be enacted according to the wishes of the affected people, and that the majority vote should prevail over the minority? No, the majority vote is invalid unless it is in accord with influential people in wealthy countries.

This is queer. An attempt is being made to obliterate the word immorality, both in dictionaries and minds of the people.

If homosexuality is not immoral, will there be anything to call immoral in our society? Our study of history reveals that once a great nation loses its moral principles, it decays both militarily and politically. It is high time we codified our moral precepts. We must guard them. Those nations that wish to outlaw morals should not compel us to do as they do.