The population of Malawi is in excess of 10 million impoverished citizens.
Average life expectancy is 37 years.
122 babies die out of every 1000 born.
Life under the unforgiving sun doesn’t get much harder.
Britain is one of many countries that digs deep in its pocket to fund what passes for life there. I had thought it was because we didn’t want to have to send our army in to bury 10,000,000 bodies and live with the guilt, but it seems that is not the problem.
The birth rate in Malawi is only 1.61 per cent per annum, so even with an average 5 children being born to each Malawian Mother, so many die that the population are not replacing themselves. Perhaps this is our guilty reason – eugenics by proxy.
Campaigning for more birth control, whether by the use of condoms or abstinence doesn’t make any logical sense unless we are advocating eugenics by proxy, or should that be genocide by proxy.
However, some 70,000 Malawians die every year from HIV/AIDS. That is 70,000 deaths that the country can ill afford. The UN has estimated that 16 per cent of those of working age are infected.
For a complex web of reasons involving religious beliefs, fertility and virility being intrinsically entwined, and an entrenched reverence for their past incarnation as ‘warriors’, there is a deep seated dislike of homosexual behaviour.
Given their circumstances, the low birth-rate, the high death rate, the lack of strong individuals to work the land, there is a pragmatic reason not to encourage homosexuality. It doesn’t make any sort of statistical sense.
When you have your back to the wall, or rather your back to the barren scorched earth with not enough people to work it, statistics come alive in a way which is not understood by those of the chattering classes in more prosperous nations.
Which is why the Pinkeratti here in the UK is so outraged that Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza’s ‘engagement party’ was disrupted by armed police who carted them away to a court which sentenced them to 14 years of hard labour, hopefully on the land, rather than worrying about the colour of their lipstick.
‘But darlink, what about their Human Rights, it’s just too, too dreadful – my dear, have you heard, those cruel bas***ds have put them in separate cells’ said the Tatchell’s and other minor celebrities of the Pink Mafia.
Malawi prison authorities have split the convicted gay couple – a development which has been described by human rights campaigners as a cruel, malicious and vindictive attempt to cause the couple psychological distress and heartache.
Now Alan Duncan, the International Development Minister, who naturally is of the pink persuasion, is lisping dark threats about cutting the aid budget to Malawi, that essential aid budget which feeds the country.
This is ethical Britain for you, sitting on its frilly sofa, mincing through yards of column inches denouncing Steven Pound as homophobic for calling a footballer a ‘fairy’, and calmly demanding that we starve the entire population of Malawi as punishment for having ruined Chimbalanga’s engagement party.
Talk to me about cutting all overseas aid by all means. There is an argument that we cannot afford any of it when it is currently financed by our children’s future earnings. Please don’t ask me to support the notion that the Malawians must starve to death if they won’t accept our cosseted Western sense of what is really important in life – or their right to rule their own country.
SBML is the landlord of the Raccoon Arms. He lives North of Watford and has an eclictic range of interests from Science and Technology to Politics including Woodwork and Genealogy. His political viewpoint has evolved from being a student demonstrator to more liberal views and has now seen the light in Libertarianism.
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Can’t see the problem. ALL footballers are fairies.
This demonstrates what foreign aid is really about – buying influence and wielding power.
Trade not aid would be better for everyone except politicians and taxpayer funded do-gooders.
My PE teacher used to shout ‘Light and airy like a fairy’ at us.
Good!
It is less of them trying to climb under trains and trucks to get into Europe.
Africans are supposed to be “the origional humans”. So where were THEY when we were building Rome, Paris and London?
Sitting on their arses awaiting the great “God” UN, with his big white truck, is the answer.
Furor Teutonicus,
Jesus wept, where to start?
“…where were THEY when we were building Rome, Paris and London?”
I’d assume that having built the Egyptian, Babylonian, Sumerian and Mesopotamian empires (amongst others), built monuments and temples that we struggle to relpicate even now, developed numbers, counting systems, multiplication, division, geometry various forms of writing, various trade routes and assorted feats of engineering (all pre-dating both the Greek and Roman empires) they were probably on a smoke break.
Just out of interest, how much input did you have in the building of Rome, Paris or London? Too busy sat on your arse waiting for the great “Satan” – scapegoating to give oneself a feeling of slightly smug superiority, is the answer.
Easy this being a tw@t via a keyborad lark, don’t you think?
Babylonian, Sumerian and Mesopotamian empires (amongst others)
Geography: F
Try Mali, Songhay, Zimbabwe, Kush and Axum.
Am I the only one who thinks that aid should come with strings attached?
“Malawi prison authorities have split the convicted gay couple
Oh dear – so much for the liberterian ethos. It’s been fun, but this is a step too far for me – I’ll leave you all to your wet dreams of barbed wire and pink triangles.
That in no way makes it acceptable to threaten the withdrawal of aid based on this specific issue. It is imperialism of the worst kind and collective punishment to boot, which rights campaigners seem to be frothing at the mouth to inflict.
Is the money being given to change Malawian attitudes and legislation or to help impoverished people? We are told it is the latter therefore the funding must be pretty much untouchable. Either it is given for aid or it is not given.
This argument goes to the heart of my dislike of taxpayer funded foreign aid. Were the money being given by me voluntarily it would come without strings and I would choose to support institutions I felt went about their aid giving in a decent manner. Instead the money is prised from my sweaty palms by our Government and distributed to God knows where for God knows what ostensibly for relief but really just to fund the right kind of people to get do-gooding onto their CVs and to buy influence in foreign executives.
The poor and the needy of a great many countries are exploited just as our own native welfare class are. The billions of dollars, pounds and Euros that flow into Africa enables Governments to leave their own people to languish in squalor and have their needs met by foreigners rather than address those issues themselves.
I find myself in agreement with Vimes. This is a spiteful little piece full of silly stereotyping and unworthy of your usual thoughtful critiques.
How can two wrongs make any kind of right? Improving the lot of majority does not preclude improving the lot of the minority. And – shock, horror – gay men can actually become biological fathers (or vice versa).
P T Barnum,
Interesting – it’s ‘thoughtful critque’ when you agree with me and ‘spiteful silly stereotyping’ when you don’t.
‘Two wrongs never make a right’ – it is not I who is advocating starving the majority in order to improve the lot of a minority. You and Vimes apparently uphold that view. That is not a Libertarianism that I want any part of. You have a choice as to whether to be openly homosexual or not. The rest of the population do not have a choice as to whether to starve or not. Without aid that is what they will do. And you think that is a price worth paying in order to force your idea of where the law should lie onto another country?
I’m treading very carefully here Anna, but are British Taxpayers actually keeping Malawi on life support?
Still treading carefully, that’s a dreadful dependency culture that’s in place then. Makes our homegrown sink estates seem like Monaco in comparison.
Hell,
Couldn’t agree with you more about a dependency culture. That is bad enough in itself -but topping it off with blackmail takes the biscuit.
God Bless Politicians… before despatching them to t’other place.
I have disagreed with your analysis on several occasions, particularly in regard to euthanasia, but have respected the quality and sincerity of your argument. This time, with cheap cracks about lipstick and lisping, the completely plausible case you make (food first, fun later, get the rent-a-gay-gobs out of the picture) gets lost in what reads as a sniping, carping anti-gay sideswipe.
The issue seems to be, once again, the zeal of the Official Campaigner, for whom everything is viewed through the prism of his/her particular issue, whether race, creed, affliction, etc. Is it a wonder, then, that people aren’t inclined to show the expected deference?
How very dare they! What right do our gay government ministers have to re-colonise* Nyasaland with my money? Let the locals live as the majority of them wish – it’s called democracy ( which was in the box marked Flat-Pack Independence containing a gold-plated mace and a dozen assorted costumes from Ede & Ravenscroft that was left c/o Dr Banda in 1964). If Nyasaland’s MPs decide they can not function without interior decorators and wedding arrangers, they will change their laws.
* no pun intended re the lower part of the alimentary canal.
Why don’t we just invade to civilise.
“A choice to be openly Homosexual”? Is this the postmodern world gone mad? Can I choose to be openly male please?
Is it fair to appear to try to blackmail a country into becoming ‘tolerant’ by threatening to withdraw aid that’s helping to provide such basic things as a clean water supply and sanitation?
“Since 1990, the percentage of Malawians with access to safe drinking water has increased from 40% to 81%, and to sanitation from 47% to 61%.”
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Where-we-work/Africa-Eastern–Southern/Malawi/Key-facts/
Britain, after all, only became legally ‘tolerant’ in the 1960s, and others (Nigeria) seem to have taken a more recent step backwards with Sharia Law advocating death by stoning.
I’m very uncomfortable with people being punished for doing what is natural to them, but I do think we need to set our own house in order first, before we preach to others and order them to ‘behave’.
And it strikes me as supremely ridiculous that a society which tolerates child rape, child labour and child soldiers should hurl into prison a homosexual couple.
I think some of your stats are suspect!
According to the CIA, the infant mortality rate in Malawi is 83 deaths per 1,000 live births not 122.
The population growth rate is 2.75 percent per annum – not surprising with 5 births per mother and less than a tenth of those babies dying as infants. The population is now estimated at 15 million (having grown from 10 million in 1998).
Life expectancy is 51 not 37.
Sorry to be pedantic, but facts do matter…
Adam, I drew my stats from HERE I’m not sure whether to trust that source more or less than the CIA – but since it isn’t dated, then perhaps it just shows how much good all that aid is doing.
The CIA factbook is generally accepted as of a high standard for such worldwide information, and is used extensively in research sourcing etc.
Have I got this right? They were sent to prison for Homosexuality?
What would be the situation there after, if they were allowed to share a cell?
Not that this has anything to do with my own personal opinions, but what is the point of sending people to prison for breaking the law if you then encourage them to break the law. It will have to be single cells all round, obviously. That’ll cost a few bob.
What nauseates me is that having forced their PC, gay-favouring values on us through the legal system as well as the media, our Gramscian Marxist, champagne-swilling political classes have decided that they can impose their communitarian fascist agenda on 3rd-world countries who don’t happen to share these views. By threatening (or hinting at threatening) the withdrawal of aid they are showing how morally bankrupt they really are. As if they actually gave a stuff about gay people, anyway.. they’re only pawns in a bigger game.
I am not sure I understand.
If Human Rights do exist, then they are universal and immutable. They stand in place for every individual human, at every time, and in every civilisation. What you seem to be advocating, Anna, is a type of moral relativism, whereby we excuse certain actions because it is part of a “culture” or because it is “necessary” in particular circumstances.
//Please don
Another thought:
//And you think that is a price worth paying in order to force your idea of where the law should lie onto another country?//
Who has mentioned force? Force must be violent, must be physical. What I am advocating is bribery, blackmail. That involves no force. A simple choice for the Malawian people: either abandon your authoritarianism, your ignoring of individual rights, and receive foreign aid, or keep hold of your treasured traditions, your valued culture, and die in the dust, under the sun. No violence of any kind is being threatened – a mere with-holding of funds. No more a threat of force than asking someone to dance for their money.
Hello, indigomyth!
No doubt Anna Raccoon will be along shortly to give you her answer to your questions.
My own feeling is that this might be an example of the disagreement between the two views of libertarianism characterised by Chandran Kukathas of the London School of Economics as “Federalism” and “Unionism.” (I wrote a short piece on it here.)
Hello YMB!
An interesting post over at yours. Will post a longer thought over there.
YMB,
The point of my post was also to ascertain Anna’s apparent support for this outcome, and her apparent belief in it “reasonableness”. And her rejection of the idea of universal Human Rights; and her denouncing of moral imperialism; and her championing of moral relativism.
Now here’s a shock…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/10190653.stm
Indigomyth,
I take your point.
While I obviously cannot speak for Anna, I simply assumed that these things were apparent more than real.