By Pius Nyondo
Pornography is thriving business in Malawi. Police and the Censorship Board have waged battles against the problem, but there are no signs that it is about to disappear. So is it a lost fight? PIUS NYONDO takes up the issue in this first article in the series on pornography in Malawi.
It is a chilly Monday morning. Like other business-people in downtown Mzuzu, Wanangwa is busy dusting off his shop as he looks forward to what appears to be a promising day for business.
Wanangwa, 29, is a father of three and survives on selling music and video CDs. Apart from Malawian productions, his shop also stocks music and films from across the world.
But there is more to his shop. While some customers leave the shop with Nigerian, American or Indian movies, others go home with pornographic films.
And Wanangwa is not alone. Pornography is thriving business for sellers of video and music tapes and DVDs in the country.
"Unlike other videos," said Wanangwa, "blue movies make good business. People will always buy them. It is lucrative business."
Some customers, he said, will even prescribe their preferred movies and ask him to get them every time he goes out to buy films for his business.
The porn buyer
More tellingly, Wanangwa said, his customers are typically people of high social standing holding white-collar jobs.
"Typical buyers are young men. But once in a while, old men and women will come to ask for the movies. When such people come, you have to be very careful because you never know whether they are police officers.
"It is risky business," he said.
When I convince him that I am not a police agent, telling him that I am a customer, Wanangwa samples and shows me some porn movies. They range from African, Indian to American movies.
"Most buyers prefer these," he said, pointing at Afro-American movies.
"The price is the same, though. They all go at K500 (about $1.25) each."
Wanangwa said he sells a minimum of 50 pornographic films a month, giving him about K25 000 (about $62.50).
He said it is difficult to buy pornographic films, let alone to sell them, because police are always ready to pounce.
Wanangwa said sometimes he buys the films from some dealers in Lilongwe or he goes to South Africa to buy them.
"They are very expensive in Lilongwe because of the demand in the country. But when you go to South Africa and safely bring them into the country, you are assured of good money.
"When you gain experience in the business, it is not difficult to evade the prying eyes of the police because we usually pack the porn movies together with normal videos. And even when you are caught, you can always offer a little something to them," said Wanangwa.
While a porn movie costs him K300 (about $0.75) in Lilongwe, the same video may cost less than R2 (about K100) in Johannesburg in South Africa.
No censorship
Wanangwa said in the past, he was afraid of the Censorship Board which used to conduct regular inspections of video shops.
He said these days, the board rarely conducts the inspections.
This is an assertion chief censoring officer at the board, Humphrey Mpondaminga, corroborated.
Mpondaminga attributed the board’s inactiveness to inadequate funding.
"The challenge is very much about how much is invested to run various programmes for the Censorship Board and not the trickery of those peddling pornography. For some four years now, the budget to run the Censorship Board has been inadequate.
"This office requires at least K60 million (about $150 000) every year and four additional vehicles to run all its four programmes, including that of pornography," he said.
Mpondaminga claimed that based on the experience gained over the years, the board has developed solid investigation strategies to curb the problem of pornography.
"We’ve established that there are three levels of distribution for pornography: the streets, the public film video shows and people’s homes [which are] the lowest level.
"Then, we have some streets where [pornography] is sold as the second level. The third and highest level are those involved in downloading, reproducing or importing the material. This third level is the most important link in the supply chain of pornographic films.
"Our investigations show that only some of the importers are involved in this malpractice. It is interesting to note that when arrested and prosecuted, most of the culprits have volunteered to help give clues to others involved in peddling pornography," he said.
Internet porn
According to Mpondaminga, pornography in the country is on the rise because of the developments in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector which have made it easy for more Malawians to have access to the internet.
"Most printed porno DVDs being sold in the streets are from the internet, mostly supplied by street-side shacks operating as DVD or multimedia centres. This accounts for about 80 percent of the stuff in the country," he said.
He said for the past four years the board has been targeting key suppliers of pornographic material, based on the assumption that if the problem is dealt with at this level, the other levels in the supply chain will be starved of the content.
As part of the strategy, he said since 2010, the board has also been running a campaign to improve theatre standards to conform to the requirements of the Censorship Act.
"We have persistently engaged public video operators through sensitisation meetings, follow-ups on theatre standards and enforcement campaign. We have taken advantage of these regular contacts with theatre operators to do surprise checks on pornography and the results have been impressive," said Mpondaminga.
Porn and poverty
A social worker at St. John of God Community Services, Christopher Mhone, said poverty lies at the heart of the booming business in pornography.
He said some people are forced to subsist on selling pornographic material because of lack of better opportunities for earning a living.
"You will rarely find video showrooms in places where most people are well-to-do. For example, you will not find such places in Chimaliro [in Mzuzu], Area 47 [in Lilongwe] or Sunnyside [in Blantyre] but you are definitely going to find many such places in Zolozolo [in Mzuzu], Ntandire [in Lilongwe] and Ndirande [in Blantyre].
"Why? Because of the poverty levels in these places which are forcing everyone to find the most viable way to survive in town," said Mhone.
He said efforts by the board and police to clamp down on video showrooms that show pornographic movies are likely to be ineffective because the business provides a livelihood to some people.
"Children and the youth are a readily available market for porn in such areas because their families don’t have the capacity to own television sets where they can monitor what their children watch," said Mhone.
He said dealing with urban poverty will give the country a chance to effectively tackle the problem of pornography.
"Once parents are no longer preoccupied with their work and business, they will pay more attention to the welfare of their children. That, I am sure, can be one way of trying to bring irresponsible watching of pornography to a halt," he said.
nice research
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