The Maravi Post

ATLANTA, US--Malawi’s Information Minister Patricia Kaliati doesn't like ‘Action Girl’, Weekend Times’ huge attraction which helps the paper fly off the newsstand.

On Fridays, the day the paper hits the streets, readers quickly turn to page eight – Action Girl is also called Page 8 by readers - where a picture of a scantily dressed female is splashed.

“Why pay a girl child to pose in the nude?” Kaliati was quoted saying by Weekend Express, which is published by the Malawi Institute of Journalism.

“How would you feel to see your daughter or sister exposed like that?” the minister, waving a copy of the paper, wanted to know. “What a shame!”

Kaliati was speaking at the launch of the Malawi Child Protection and Gender Media Network.

Applauding journalists for the initiative and pledging government support in efforts to expose abuse against children, the minister said Action Girl was demeaning to women and that it put young girls and women at risk.

She called on journalists to campaign for the removal of Page 8 from Weekend Times.

Malawi’s conservative society prefers not to discuss issues about sex openly. And it’s not hard to find Action Girl, in a bikini and striking a suggestive pose, offensive to the moral sensibilities of some individuals.

But others have argued that soft-porn Action Girl isn’t indecent at all. They underline the fact that those who pose for Weekend Times aren’t minors and that they do so using free will. If the paper uses pictures from elsewhere, the pictures are of adults, not children.

Advocates of free expression have cautioned against Kaliati’s sentiment, saying it could lead to government censorship. Last year, the Mutharika administration passed a controversial law which empowers a minister, who can use subjective interpretation of content, to ban a publication on grounds that its material is against the public interest.
 
Weekend Times, known for exposing influential individuals including politicians, has in the past run into trouble with the authorities who said the paper was being published illegally. For some months, the paper taken was out of circulation.

This popular newspaper is published by the company that is owned by the family of the country’s first president, Dr. Kamuzu Banda, who was in power from 1964-1994.

During Banda's 30 years in power, the government controlled what people saw or read. When Malawians in 1992 called for political pluralism, Banda initially resisted change but he eventually caved under pressure. The new open society also blunted the censors’ scalpel: people were now free to access materials of their choice.

As Kaliati pushes for the “death” of Action Girl, what would Banda, who regarded himself as the custodian of Malawi women and always warned, sternly, against abusing “my mbumba”, say about Page 8? The reader’s guess is as good as this correspondent’s.
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©2012 The Maravi Post. Reproduction authorised, with usual acknowledgment

BLANTYRE--Malawi Catholic bishops have agreed on key issues that give challenge to its faithful , including that they should get circumcised at recommended hospitals in order to stem Aids infection.

At its first Annual Plenary Meeting of the Episcopal Conference of Malawi, the umbrella body of the Catholic Bishops in Malawi, in the presence of the Vatican Chargé d’Affaires for Malawi, Very Reverend Monsignor Hubertus Van Megen, among other things, agreed on the following:
 
1.   The Conference resolved to implement Pope Benedict XVI’s Exhortation on the African Synod highlighting the role of women, the youth and the right to life as outlined in the document entitled: “Africae Munus”
 
2.   Through the Pastoral Commission, the Conference resolved to prepare a comprehensive catechetical syllabus which should be ready before the ‘Year of Faith’ to be celebrated from 11th October, 2012
 
3.   The Conference endorsed the suggested names of persons to start the preparatory work for the 2014 AMECEA Plenary Session scheduled to take place in Malawi.
 
4.   Regarding boarding and school fees in Catholic Schools, the Conference endorsed the recommendation that was made by the Education Commission to raise the fees up to MK21, 000 per student per term.
 
5.   After making a few observations and changes, the Conference approved in principle the draft Catholic Education Policy in Malawi which shall be used ad experimentum until all the corrections and observations have been taken on board.
 
6.   After a long debate and scrutiny on the draft document, the Conference approved the newly formulated Strategic Framework for the Catholic Church in Malawi to be implemented in the next five years.
 
7.   The Bishops resolved not to allow anybody to make his/her own Chichewa translation of the new people’s responses as found in the new English Missal to give room to the Conference to come up with a unified version.
 
8.   In order to encourage men and women who want to associate themselves with the Church while discharging their duties, the Conference approved the Association of the Catholic Journalists in Malawi.
 
9.   In the wake of the medical recommendation for male circumcision, the Conference agreed to allow this kind of operation to be carried out in Church’s Health Facilities that have been identified as centres for the exercise.
 
10. After a reflective deliberation on the hard and difficult political, social and economic times Malawi is currently experiencing, the Bishops make an appeal to all the citizenry of this country, namely:
-        Government
-        Political Parties
-        Faith Communities
-        Civil Societies
-        Diplomats and everybody else
to handle the current situation with sober minds, guided by the Spirit of truth and love that will lead different stakeholders to engage into a meaningful and listening dialogue thereby enabling all people to respect each other and uphold the rights of everybody, especially children and women. They further appeal to all the citizenry to refrain from any form of violence that would only result into the disruption of the much desired development and peace we cherish in this country.
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©2012 The Maravi Post. Reproduction authorised, with usual acknowledgment

BLANTYRE--Up to 800 new recruits will be hired by the Malawi Defence Force, a spokesman of the MDF has been quoted as saying.

The MDF started a nationwide recruitment campaign of the greens and spokesperson Francis Kakhuta said 100 of them will be women.

It's not clear how many soldiers the MDF have, although figures from foreign experts put it at 10,000.

The MDF wants to recruit new soldiers every year, Kakhuta was quoted by The Nation as saying.
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©2012 The Maravi Post. Reproduction authorised, with usual acknowledgment

BLANTYRE—Police in Malawi say over 20 people have died in separate incidents after being struck by bolts of lightning across the country over the past three months with the recent one reported in Karonga where two people died on the spot.

Karonga Police spokesperson Enock Livason said the two deceased Edward Maloto Nkhoma and Dorothy Mtawali had been coming from the fields when they met their fate.

The police said about seven deaths had been reported in the North while 10 deaths were reported in the Southern Region and three in the Central region.

Lavason said that this had prompted the police to go on a civic education campaign to tell the masses on how to react when it is raining.

“We’re advising people not to walk whenever it is raining and not to hide under trees when it is raining,” he said.

The issue of lighting is controversial is Malawi where belief in witchcraft is strong. Some people believe that they have the power to cause lightning.

Chief Chikowa of Gawani Village in Mulanje where there are many cases of lightnings said they were suspecting that someone was responsible.

He said he couldn’t believe the number of people killed by lightning in “our villages and I know some people have been warned not to play with fire.”

Chikowa said there was need for the government to investigate the deaths.
 
In Blantyre, seven people in houses close to each other  were killed by lightning in November. Police said the victims - among them four children - were burned beyond recognition.

Also in Blantyre, another four people were killed and 20 injured when lightning struck a family gathering on New Year's Day. Four more died in Thyolo on the same day.

Chikowa said the deaths from lightning were a "growing phenomenon" in rural areas. "There is need for an investigation with a view of trying to identify the causes of the recent upsurge of fatal lightning incidents in the country," he said.

"We will talk to the department of science and technology on what is the cause of the lightning."

Jonas Phiri, a forecaster at the weather service, however said it was too early to judge whether there had been a rise in lightning strikes or fatalities.

"Sometimes people judge it on the amount of damage caused, not the actual statistics," he said. "As a scientist, I cannot draw conclusions just based on reports. Lightning can kill more than five people at a time. As soon as thunder develops, we get lightning, and anything can happen."

Phiri said the greatest concentration of lightning flashes in the world occurs in the tropics, with the highest values recorded over the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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©2012 The Maravi Post. Reproduction authorised, with usual acknowledgment