What is UNFPA communicating?

You know by that we, Alhajj Jean-Philippe LePoisson, SC (RTD); Abiti Joyce Befu, MG 66, the Most Paramount Native Authority Mandela and I, are not in the tradition of discussing ‘small things’. That is why, if you have religiously and studiously followed our expedition since March 2012, you must have realised that we only talk about issues and people that affect our lives hic et nunc and the future of our great country, the Federal Republic of Malawi.

We have discussed Cashgate at length and even proposed the re-enactment of the forfeiture act to ensure that people who get rich out of dipping their dirty fingers into our national soup should be made to account for their illicit wealth. It is our belief that anybody who has honestly earned his or her wealth will have nothing to hide. Actually, such a person will be used as a business model to those, like us, struggling to get to the top. We have agreed amongst ourselves that when we take over government, we will bring back the forfeiture act.

All those that have cases to answer relating to theft of public resources, or kusolola as Hetherwick Ntaba used to joke seriously before his political wings were clipped, should be tethered to the biggest tree near Mikuyu in Zomba until they have been cleared. Then and only then will their property be given back at no cost to the Federal Republic.

We have discussed tractorgate because we believe that if those assets our great late President Ngwazi Professor Dr Bingu wa Mutharika bought from India with a loan that we are paying and our children and their children will pay were put to their intended use, we would not be shamelessly begging for maize, the only crop most Malawians have brainwashed to call food day in day out.

We are not fond of nights of prayer, but for once, we will ask our abundant prophets, apostles, bishops, popes, leaders of nyabhingi, and imams to pray so that those who are hiding our tractors die instantly. Afe ndithu! If prayers are found wanting, we will engage our abundant witchcraft masters. If that does not work, we will use other means, legal and lethal, of punishing them. Soon.

We have discussed food insecurity that has bedevilled mother Malawi for years because we wholeheartedly believe, like Amatrya Sen who has forcefully argued and empirically proved, that droughts or wars do not cause food shortages because food production requires water. Rain, we repeat the obvious, is not the only source of water. Chata, Chauta, Chiuta, Mlengi, Mlungu, N’lungu, Jah, Jehovah, God gave us more than 60 perennial rivers, and Lakes Malawi, Chilingali, Kazuni, Malombe, Chiuta and numerous lagoons to irrigate our farmland from; yet here we are begging for food assistance almost always. We knew, because our weather officers told us last year or even before, that there would be bad weather this year. Why did we not prepare for that prediction? If phwiti or timba can prepare for eventualities, what makes us, Malawian homo politico, fail to behave better?

Enough about the painful past! Today, we discuss the recent interventions and pronouncements by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) because it is an important player in our lives. It has done great things here and there. We acknowledge that. However, we find obnoxious, insulting, irresponsible, and immoral the organisation’s proposal that because some children in some schools already engage in casual sex sometimes, Malawi should adopt a policy that provides ‘sex kits’, including distribution of condoms, to these children so that they engage in sex freely without contracting sexually transmitted diseases and getting early pregnancies. That way, the UNFPA argument goes, school children can complete their education.

Tantalising as this sounds, what the UNFPA forgets is that schools are not sex centres. Schools are education centres where children must learn everything including self-restraint, creativity, morality and productivity. Providing 12-year-olds with condoms is like giving guns and pangas to thugs because, after all, they already use these weapons of thuggery.

If we may ask: Who, in UNFPA, has ever given his or her children such ‘sex kits’? We need case studies today.n