Malawi is slowly turning into a nation of fallacious thinkers. The Cambridge dictionary defined fallacy as an idea that a lot of people think is true but which is false. A fallacious thinking is simply a thinking that is not correct. In our country, if you follow everyday debates on contentious issues you are able to pick some fallacious thinking in the arguments forwarded by some debaters. One wonders if the aim is to mislead the public at large or simply to advance our own position in a particular issue.
In this article, let me highlight five examples that some people have turned them into fallacies. Let us begin with our National soccer team. This is the team that some Malawians cannot stand on top of Mulanje Mountain and tell the rest of the world that they are proud of this team. It is a team of perennial underachievers. The best it has achieved so far is to win the so called Silver plate at COSAFA, a trophy that is meant for the best losers. An achievement that excited some people for it brought them memories of the 70s and the 80s when winning cups was the main aim of the National team. To fix this luckless National team; some people have argued that hiring an expert coach is the solution. We have to be honest here; this so called expert coach is a white man who will come all the way from overseas. It looks like such people are borrowing a leaf from the Zambians who won the African Nations cup with a white man in charge. No need to look at other factors just hire an expert, Malawi would be on the right track. Does it really follow that once an expert coach is hired then our National team will be winning games? This is a fallacy at its best. Are there no other factors that are contributing to the failure of this National team?
Then there is the issue of gay and lesbian marriages; a contentious issue in Malawi that divides the Civil liberties organisations and the Church. The Church has vehemently appealed to the government not to legalise gay marriages. It is as if once gay marriages are legalised then all men will go out there looking for fellow men as marriage partners, it is like once legalised then many marriages are going to collapse as both men and women would be looking for fellow partners.Is this the case in countries where these marriages are legalised?Are there no other factors that might come in like culture, self-conscious that can prevent people from doing this? Is this not another fallacious thinking at its best?
Then there is the newly proposed bill on abortion. If one can sit down and read this piece of legislation without a corrupted mind against abortion you would find out that this proposed law would protect the health of either the child or the mother depending on who between them is in danger. But recently a certain religious group is appealingfor support to march against such a bill. In their belief, once abortion is legalised then all the hospitals/ clinics will be overflowed with queues of women and girls going to abort. People are going to throw away contraceptives in preference of abortion. In countries where abortion is legalised do they really experience this surge? This is a fallacious thinking at its core.
What about the recently passed land law? It had its own fallacious thinkers. Here is a piece of legislation that had taken a long time to be implemented. The process to bring this piece of legislation dates back to the days of Dr Kamuzu; who himself admitted that the system of holding land in our country is primitive and not good for economic development. This is where the process of bringing this recently passed land law originated. What happened when the bill got passed in Parliament? Fallacious thinkers were at it again. They argued that this law is not a good one because it will render chiefs useless as there will be no land for them to distribute. Do Chiefs really exist because there is customary land? Fallacious thinkers!
If we can engage in these debates with concrete facts and not with fallacious arguments to force our particular way of thinking into the heads of Malawians, I strongly believe our food security, poverty levels, unemployment would have been minimised in our country. Our thinking would have brought good policies to run this country for the benefit of all. Let us stop being a nation of fallacious thinkers.