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| Watipaso: The writer of the article |
Muderanji was so ill, but Khumbo (both not real names) could not listen. He wanted to enjoy his conjugal rights.
So where did Muderanji learn this strange behaviour?
“It's not that I'm denying you deliberately. Please, consider my ill-health,” she tried to reason with him.
“Shut up! Tell me. It's either I do it or you pack your belongings and leave this house,” he countered angrily.
But Khumbo used to be a very loving and caring husband until two years ago when he started drinking beer and using drugs.
Since then every night he comes home drunk, he urinates and vomits in the bed, and when she tells him to go outside he beats her.
Muderanji does not like to sleep with her husband when he is drunk, because he stinks, behaves badly, and she is afraid that he has been cheating on her with other women who may be HIV positive. If she refuses to have sex with him, he forces her.
The Zomba-based Centre for Social Research survey (2008) suggests that women are loyal to their husbands and do their best to be good wives and in that way discourage their husbands from drinking or smoking and being unfaithful, irrational and violent.
However, many drunken husbands have behaved otherwise.
The study on substance use in relation to gender based violence in Malawi by SINTEF Health Research, Norway and Centre for Social Research, University of Malawi in 2008 discovered that men who use substances (most commonly alcohol) are often unable to provide their families with the basic necessities, because they spend much of their income on alcohol.
As a result women and children go hungry, with tattered clothes, and children are sometimes unable to finish their education because of a lack of money.
Some women have started businesses of their own (selling charcoal, nuts, etc.), so that they could make their own money and not be dependent on their husbands.
While this seems to be a good and effective way of empowering women and encouraging men to look after their families, some men, in their drunken state, feel they are outdone. Eventually, they stop their wives to take part in any economic activities.
Others confiscate the very financial capital that a woman had and spend it on drinking thereby depriving a woman her right to participate in economic activities.
Women feel better about themselves and more secure knowing that they can look after themselves, and men may appreciate and respect women more if the women are not completely dependent on them for their own and their children’s survival.
Physical abuse
Drug Fight Malawi Executive Director Nelson Baziwelo Zakeyu says men often get aggressive and irrational when they drink alcohol or smoke chamba, and this leads to misbehaviour.
Zakeyu says many people have complained of drunken men fighting and arguing with other people in the community, but most often they go home to their wives and end up venting their anger on them. The results show that it is not uncommon for women who are married to men who drink and/or smoke to be beaten up or yelled at. Men’s use of alcohol puts their wives at risk of physical abuse.
“We also see from our study that there is a connection between the economic abuse and the physical abuse experienced by women,” said Zakeyu.
According to Zakeyu, some drunkards do not provide their wives with money for food (because they have spent it all on alcohol or drugs), and when they come home drunk or stoned and hungry, there is no food on the table, they get angry and beat their wives for not preparing food for them.
Sexual abuse
The most common abuse is what happens between a husband and a wife is when a drunken man gets home and feels he has the right to have sex with his wife, even if she is sick.
The wife, on the other hand, does not want to have sex with her drunken or stoned husband who behaves strangely or badly and smells.
She may also be afraid that he has been having sex with other women who may be HIV positive.
When she refuses sex he forces her. In some instances, women exacerbate the situation, especially they hold to a belief or culture that it is ‘his right’ although they do not like it themselves.
Many a man admit they often cheat on their wives when they are out drinking. There is a good chance that the bargirls are HIV positive, and that they catch the virus from them, and be in a position to infect their wives with the virus as well.
This kind of sexual abuse is the most common form of abuse women experience, according to Centre for Social Research study.
What should be done?
The above studies indicate that there is a strong connection between men’s use of substances and gender-based violence.
However, in an attempt to minimize the effect on women it is important not just to look at how to reduce men’s use of substances, but also to look at how to empower women.
Several studies from Malawi indicate that Malawian women have a lack of respect for themselves and other women, and that men also share this disrespect for women. Women need to be self-sufficient and be appreciated for the important contribution that they make to the family, to the community and to Malawian society as a whole.
But this could be a reality only if we empower women through education and jobs, enable them to be self sufficient and not dependent on their husbands for survival (to increase men’s respect for women and women’s respect for themselves).
There is also a need to increase efforts on sensitizing masses on sexual abuse, cheating, prostitution in relation to substance use, and how this relates to the spread of HIV and Aids in Malawi.
The government of Malawi has in the past few years focused increased attention on alcohol and drug abuse, through the establishment of an Inter-ministerial Committee on Drug Control (IMCDC), led by the Ministry of Home Affairs and Internal Security.
Thus Muderanji can only hope that Khumbo will change one day and reduce the amount of alcohol and drug consumption.
END
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