In Malawi, Children with Disabilities, and Their Mothers, Abused and Abandoned

LILONGWE — Christina Kabudula, 22, is struggling to feed her family as a single mother of four in Malawi’s capital city. She and two of her children suffer from malnutrition due to the ongoing food crisis plaguing the country.

Three years ago, her husband left them, she said, because their second-born child is disabled: their four-year-old daughter is stunted, in large part due to poor nutrition, and has developed learning difficulties.

Currently, 20 percent of the population is food insecure due to low crop production and increasing prices for fertilizers and seeds.

Luwisa Davidson, 30, from neighboring the Salima district, was also left by her husband, purportedly because their seven-year old child has cerebral palsy.

“Since my child was born with this disability, my husband has changed,” she said. “I have been abandoned completely and the love that we had has vanished. He got married to another woman when the child was four years old and he told me I am no longer needed.”

Davidson has a primary-level education and depends on her husband’s income, but after he left, she and the child were left with no any financial support. She now stays with her relatives, with whom she said she cannot leave the child.

“No one is willing to stay with a disabled child,” she said.

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world. About half of the population lives in poverty, with three-quarters of them living on less than US$1.90 a day, according to the World Bank. And as is the case in other parts of the world, the worst affected are women, who traditionally depend on their spouses or other men in their families for their economic survival. Without them, there are few avenues for these women to regain any semblance of financial stability, and even fewer for the women who had no prior history of employment.

“Women face a lot of stigma, and it is worse for those women who are themselves with physical disabilities,” said Patricia Kaliati, minister of gender and social welfare. “They cannot make any decision within the house, let alone within the communities where they live.”

But if their husbands stay, many are subject to abuse — if not by their husbands, then by their in-laws, or other members of the community — for bearing children with disabilities.

Loveness Mikaeli, 34, who also has a daughter with cerebral palsy, said that she has been abused, verbally or physically, by all three.

“It does not matter whether the husband has abandoned you and your children or is still with you in the house, women, as well as their disabled children, suffer from violence and abuse,” said Mikaeli. “Even your neighbors do not want to see you around.”

When a child is born disabled, or acquires a disability as they grow, many Malawians believe that the child either has been bewitched by family members (usually a woman relative) or that the family is cursed.

One survey found that three in four Malawians believe in witchcraft, and — shockingly — educated citizens are more likely to believe in it than those with no formal education. And at the center of their belief are women as perpetrators.

“Some husbands openly say that this is a [curse] from the mother’s side, and they abandon them and marry another woman,” said Lyness Manduwa, executive director of Parents of Disabled Children Association of Malawi (PODCAM).

Men culturally are encouraged to take a second wife, leaving their first spouse and disabled children vulnerable to financial crisis, stigma and even lack of inheritance, such as land, property, or certain financial credits.

Most women at least are able to access income through group loans to start up small businesses, but, said Manduwa, within these groups themselves is discrimination that leaves out women with disabilities, or women with disabled children. “Other women will think they are not able to run a business because of their disabilities,” she said. “This is how deep stigma is in Malawi.”

PODCAM offers one of the few opportunities these women have to participate in income-generating activities. Under PODCAM, they’ve been introduced to income generating activities, like keeping chickens, selling second-hand clothing or other foodstuffs. Malawi Central Region Chapter Chairperson Emily Maunde said that the majority-women members are mostly single mothers from low-income backgrounds who rely on their husbands to work, but 35 percent of its members are involved in the small-scale businesses throughout the country and are now living independent lives.

A culture war

While the Malawi Constitution criminalizes any form of abuse and violence against persons with disabilities — and the Child Care, Protection and Justice Act provides for the protection of all children, including those with disabilities — there is threadbare infrastructure to protect them. The government doesn’t record who or how many of these children there are, much less offer their support in the courtroom. Maunde said that PODCAM has been only partially successful in petitioning the court to force fathers who’ve abandoned their families to continue supporting them.

What’s more, said Maunde, law enforcement is rarely interested in matters affecting women and children with disabilities. “Traditionally, family members would report the matter to local chiefs, who negotiate the issues with other members of the family,” she said. Such is the extent of recourse for justice.

And, again, culture comes into play. “Men are the head of the family, and reporting them to police, we feel like we are betraying them,” said Maria Wilson, 44, who also has a child with learning difficulties.

Kaliati said her ministry has called a conference with a number of these men who, after their conversation, end up returning to their families.

Stigma can only be alleviated through community awareness programs, her office told Women Under Siege.

“The involvement of local chiefs, who are believed to be the custodian of culture, and the need to make them aware that respect for women is important for their economic growth, will help change people’s mindset towards women,” says Fred Simwaka, a public relations officer for the ministry.

While abuse and discrimination against women and persons with disabilities is punishable by law in Malawi, their persistence within family and community ecosystems, comingled with patriarchal custom, underlines the power that culture wields over the lives of women. Only by shifting cultural attitudes on disability can these mothers and their children live as more equal citizens under Malawian society.