Last week, our leader of delegation, the indefatigable Professor Joyce Befu, MEGA-1, Alhajj Jean-Philippe LePoisson, SC (RTD), Nganga Maigwaigwa, PSC (RTD), and I, the great Mohashoi, promised to tell hitherto untold stories of abuse of men and boys by women and girls. These are stories the police, the village chiefs, the feminists hiding behind the cloak of gender activism, and the human rights defenders push under the rug because they go against gender agenda.
You know us better by know. What we promise we deliver. And today we will deliver a new tale of violence committed by a woman against a boy child.
Granted. There is no denying that there could be more cases of men and boys defiling and raping women and girls. There could be more men and boys committing untold atrocities against female babies and toddlers. There could be more men and boys involved in bestiality than there are women and girls.
However, this scenario does not mean womenfolk are totally innocent and holy.
In the past week, social media ‘viralled’ a post alleging that a woman in Mzimba had raped a boy and damaged the boy’s most precious hidden treasure, chuma chobisika, the very commodity that defines boyhood and manhood. The said woman has vanished and is reportedly in South Africa.
In these of activism against gender-based violence we expected the over 20 gender, human rights, child rights, youth rights, and other organisations to say something about this Mzimba incident. But, as expected, all has been quiet on the gender front. The Mzimba incident is not the first. Almost on a daily basis, young boys are raped by female residents of Devil Avenue in Lilongwe. The police have evidence because the incidents have been fully reported to them.
We expected the police to issue a warrant of arrest for the fugitive woman. In fact, Malawi police should ask Interpol, the South African government and their hawks to arrest and detain the Mzimbian. The alleged boy child defiler and rapist should then be extradited to Malawi to face justice in Mzimba where the indecent act took place. If the South Africans do not cooperate, we should also act likewise. Tit for tat is not unfair.
We are not surprised that the gender campaigners have said nothing so far about the Mzimba ‘rape’ of the boy child because there is nothing surprising. Our experience has been that Malawian gender activists talk and act when gender-based violence, including rape and defilement, affects women and girls. Malawians have been silently ‘schooled’ to associate gender with women and to equate gender-based violence with men and boys meting out wrongs on otherwise very innocent women and girls. As Stuart Hall would have said, Malawian gender discourse is not value free.
The fact, however, is that men and boys are suffering in silence. Boys are being raped and defiled by women in silence. Boys are being wounded in their precious areas and no one is speaking out. We are and will always remind Malawians that men and boys, too, are suffering gender violence.
