44 quotes found
"Right now, I am an Independent member who will able to speak in Parliament without fear or favour, affection or ill-will and this is in line with the oath of office that I swore."
"As their Member of Parliament, I had to make an informed choice, either to serve their interest or the interest of the party."
"Africa needs visionary and transformative that can always incorporate views of women and provide them with a conducive environment for their participation in developing the region."
"In order to encourage more women participation in leadership and government, the world should give them the support they require and create space for them."
"Women play important roles in their community such as nurturing and taking care of their families and community members which makes them loyal and dependable citizens of their nations."
"Women contribute significantly to the development agenda of their nations because they all make decisions that mould children and give life and society existence."
"There is need for the women to work together in collaboration with men and integrate young women into leadership."
"In most cases, our singing, like in the woman's league, we would take some of the songs sung in the villages, then we put in political words to suit the occasion... There wasn't any particular person at that time, that this was the one who composed those songs for us to sing. No, it was just general singing. Just as we are here. You could start a song, and our songs in most cases, our African songs, they are traditional. They are not difficult to sing. We could easily pick it up, and then we would all sing"
"I had this feeling ... women should be part and parcel of the whole movement, even of running the country. Women should be involved in decision making. That was my aim."
"You know, we are the mothers. We are the ones who bring out children and these children are employed by Wenela [in South Africa] at that time. They go to Wenela and most of them die there. They don't come back alive. And then there's a lot of oppression. There's this thangata and with that federation, unfortunately for them, that time, they had already started removing people in the areas where they thought it was best for Europeans or it was best for farming ... They wanted to make room for Europeans to settle. I said, you can see all these things. Now, we are being removed in our rural areas. We are being pushed here and there. And the women understood. They said, oh yes, then we must do something."
"Actually I did not withdraw, I stepped down. Many people in Malawi asked me to stand; it was under that pressure that I decided to declare myself an independent presidential candidate. But later the church saw the opposition was not very strong, so they decided to form a coalition. We needed a change of government, for many reasons.... There were nine parties at the time, so the church advised me not to stand, because I was going to divide the votes. So I applied to join the coalition."
"Unlike all the others, I satisfied all the conditions to be their presidential candidate but I hear they rejected me when they discussed my application. They were afraid of me. Here in Malawi we are still chauvinistic."
"Where I was voting there was peace, people voted freely. I am president of Women's Voice and director of the Malawi Centre for Advice, Research and Education on Rights. We participate in voter education and we also do monitoring. All the information I received from my own offices told me the elections have been almost peaceful."
"Men have been dominating Malawi politics for too long. Maybe that's why they are blundering. But I think that if a woman can come up, she would improve a lot of things"
"I am still available, watching with keen interest. If the current government fails, I will certainly stand as a presidential candidate in the next elections."
"Our forests provide wild mushrooms and fruits and a safe space to experience our traditions and cultural beliefs."
"Plastics are one of the most incredible inventions of our time but they are also equally disruptive and costly"
"We may have won one battle, but the war on plastics in Malawi and across the world is far from over"
"Together, we challenged the idea that these companies can put a price tag on our environment and call that development."
"You sometimes put your family at risk coming up against huge companies and people that are well connected politically. You always find there’s a conflict of interest and you’re stuck in the middle. It does feel a bit threatening and can also feel a bit scary."
"It became very personal for me after interacting with farmers"
"Some of them are losing their livestock because once the animals get into the field, which is so heavily polluted with single-use plastic, they consume these plastics, which kill them, thereby affecting the livelihood of their owners."
"A lot of plastic wastes that we are generating end up at open dumpsites and they slide right back into the communities, causing pollution in our streams and landscape."
"Malawi is very far behind. Recycling of waste requires technology and we do not have a lot of that technology."
"Individuals have to be aware of their own contribution to the mess. Malawians should make it easier for plastics to end up in the right place and to be potentially recycled."
"This word is associated with tranquillity and calm. It sounds more mellow than its meaning, and I think it describes me perfectly because I like balance. I am a creative who is interested in many things. I have lived several seasons of life and have walked into different chapters where I commanded the room. I have left some chapters messily, but in the end, everything is always ok. I like things to be ok."
"My psyche analysis tests show that I am an extrovert. I think I am an extrovert-introvert, meaning I am more extroverted than introverted yet both are strong parts of me. My daughter is in boarding school, and my partner lives in Europe and now visits twice a year – Covid pandemic allowing, so I live alone. People come over thinking I must be lonely, but that is not the case. I like and value space and silence. If I have to choose between doing something with many people and doing something with fewer people, I’ll choose the latter. In one of my chapters of life, I was a festival organiser; putting festivals and events together. Bringing people together was, to me, more enjoyable than attending them."
"I wouldn’t be able to do what I do now if I hadn’t gone through all those other journeys. I’m still involved in festivals and the gender space but in a different way. My core now is conservation and climate change. Activism is intersectional. So activism is the one word that would describe it all."
"I ended up in my home country, Malawi, helping a friend run a lodge. I realised I loved hospitality and tourism. So I opened a backpackers’ campsite. The plan was to do long-distance learning for my law degree; I’d read from the beach. Of course, that didn’t happen. After about 3 years of a wonderful life in the hospitality space, I went back to London and did a diploma in hospitality and tourism."
"When I came back the next day, the “women” had indeed gathered waiting for me. However I noticed that the “women” were not women, as such. They were… kids. Teenage girls"
"I was hoping to talk to women and not to kids or girls, as I don’t think they would understand much about inheritance"
"My hero the law, save the girls,” I thought! Yet, I soon found out that this was a complex story"
"I will remain sad because I know the cost of child marriage. It deprives girls of education and undermines their self-confidence and self-identity. It also makes them prone to physical and emotional abuse by their so called husbands"
"Girl-child marriages need to be prohibited tough the Constitution because they are a violation of every conceivable human right including the right to life, health, education, human dignity and development"
"What I know for sure child marriage is a guarantee for poverty among girls in my country and I want it to end. No ifs or buts"
"widow cleansing,” a traditional practice in which a widow is expected to have sexual relations, “in order to cleanse her"
"There is a belief that if she does not sleep with someone, the spirit of her dead husband will come and visit upon her and her family will be cursed"
"It’s a mindset issue,” says White. Even the widows, they’ve told me, ‘I don’t want to die, I don’t want a curse to come to my husband.’ They cry to be cleansed"
"Some have actually come out in the open and said: ‘I used to be a commercial cleanser, I’m HIV positive, I’ve stopped, it’s not fine and I go village by village telling other commercial cleansers to stop this, it’s a risky taboo behavior"
"I decided I’m going to dedicate my life to dealing with injustice, just because I don’t like it when a structure or system puts others in poverty, puts others in a position of inequality"
"In this country, to get ahead in life, to beat poverty, you need education"
"Society wants women to be understood. To be moderate. We can’t be full human beings. Society cannot deal with our liminal complexity. From our early socialization, we are taught about virtue, being nice, being respectful and of course all this is tied to being palatable for men. On the other hand, men are taught how to want and get, to speak up, to be served, to desire and take and to decide things on their own. For instance, to date, for those women who decide to enter marriage and have children, the blunt of child care falls heavily on them. There are so many stories of women giving up on their careers and being “strong” because of their children or to keep the peace in marriage. Women’s suffering is romanticized and normalized as a part of our womanhood. For men, it is majorly not a consideration. Women are judged harshly for putting their careers first with questions like “upita ku school, ana akhala ndi ndani?” that are laced with guilt tripping and the assumption that a woman must remain the primary caregiver at home."
"It doesn’t get any better in the political space. I’m angry that women’s stories continue to be erased. The secretaries who made major contributions to the freedom struggle. The women who mobilized against the one-party state…where are their holidays? when do we celebrate them? It is also very interesting to me how in this day and age, when a man fails, he is judged in his individual capacity but when a woman fails we still claim all women have failed. The best example is our former president Dr Joyce Banda. Because she was voted out, many people (read men and pick me women aka patriarchy princesses and gate keepers) bundled women as a homogenous group who had all failed. But I also find this argument factually untrue per Malawian standards and the presidents we have had so far. Did she really fail? Who are we comparing her to? I understand that we can’t measure leadership based on other failures but neither should we base it on gender."
"If I can do it, you can! There are so many people who are willing to help, reach out to them, including me! Remember; “You are going to want to give up. Don’t.”"