Jean Kalirani is an interesting woman. The other day she taught us a strange brand of patriotism when she said we should be looking the other way when people are stealing money from government because hollering against such acts will scare away investors and donors.
Actually, Madam Minister, that is reverse patriotism.
She came back with her strange reasoning. She said although Malawi has asked for nearly US $400,000 from the Global Fund to check the spread of HIV/Aids among homosexuals, one will still be liable to serve the ‘scary’ 14 years in jail when one is ‘caught’ in a tryst with a partner of their sex.
Now, now, now, what are we saying? Will the nearly K200 million be used to bait people into coming out so that the Nyakawa Usiwausiwas of this world should have a field day locking them up for a life time? What stupid gay person will come out to access these intervention strategies while they know that they will not even use the condoms for a police van will be waiting outside the consulting room to haul them away to prison?
Or maybe, for she has taught us not to cry blue murder when Aids money is being abused, Kalirani wants her ministry to have idle money that can be abused into funding the launch of a trust and a cultural jamboree with nothing to do fighting Aids?
C’mon, good people, it is either we accept we have gays and lesbians in our midst or continue tantalising ourselves with our God-fearing tag and continue denying consenting adults the opportunity of loving whomsoever they want to love. We cannot eat our cake and still have it.
Those who manage the Fund will be out of their mind to give us money
to intervene in a problem we say we do not have. If we are saying there are no homosexuals in Malawi why should we have Aids intervention programmes for a group we do not recognise exists?
