For thousands of girls in Malawi, much has changed since 2003 when Theresa Kachindamoto (1958) became the traditional authority of Dedza, a district in the central region of the country. She was the first woman in her country's history to do so, and even she didn't trust herself when her family told her she would be the heir to the throne from a long list of chiefs with the same surname, all men. Since taking possession of the title, her mission has been to fight to ban child marriage, a tradition she calls "stupid," and to return all those girls to school. She has so far managed to prevent more than 2,500 such early marriages, but acknowledges that there is still much work to be done to defend the rights of girls.
When Cyclone Freddy hit Malawi in March 2023, leaving more than 1,000 dead and half a million internally displaced in its wake, all the alarm bells went off because she knew that the main reason why parents force their girls into marriage is poverty. It was then that he got down to work and toured the villages in his territory to remind the chiefs not to let their guard down, not to commit any nonsense now that the situation had reached a critical point. Despite the fact that child marriage has been prohibited by law since 2017, customary power in some regions continues to allow underage girls to marry: according to the organization Girls Not Brides, more than 40% of girls in Malawi are married before the age of 18. UNICEF estimates that this figure is around 32% in East and Southern Africa.
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Kachindamoto, whose name translates to "the one who fights fire", receives EL PAÍS at her home, in the bowels of a forest located in the community of Mtakataka, surrounded by fields of corn, in the middle of the planting season. Sitting in her boss's chair in an office filled with photos and international recognition, and dressed in traditional Ngoni (her tribe) garb, she talks about education, gender roles, and the strategies she has implemented to stop child marriage and promote education.
Question. How does the youngest in a family of 12 siblings, and a woman at that, become a traditional authority?
Answer. I was very surprised to learn that I was going to become my district chief. Our tradition says that a woman can't be a woman because she can't go to war, so on that day in 2003 I asked why I had been chosen. My father was the one who insisted that I was going to be the one to change this stupid tradition, and that I was going to be the first female boss in Malawi. That's how it all started.
Q. What led you to dedicate your mandate to fighting child marriage and advocating for girls' education?
A. Before becoming a chief, I had worked for more than 15 years at the theological college in Zomba. I know how important education is, but I admit that at first I didn't know what to do with this new responsibility. In those years I didn't know what was going on in this area until one day I found a little girl with a crying baby on her lap. I asked the girl to take the baby to her mother, but she explained that the baby was hers. He told me he was going to be 12 in a month. That day was an enlightenment and I decided that it couldn't happen anymore. I gathered the council of chiefs of different communities and told them that from that moment on, early marriages under their jurisdiction were prohibited. If you do, I told them, I will take away your title of chief, and you will become ordinary citizens.
Q. How did they react?
A. Most of them accepted my wish to cancel all child marriages and send all those girls back to school. After a few months, some heads of my area came to my office and told me that there were others who continued to allow these marriages. What I did was to withdraw the title imminently. That day I removed 15 men from power. When they came to the royal families to apologize and say it wasn't going to happen again, I gave them back.
I convince the chiefs of other districts not to allow it [child marriage]
Q. Such practices are not allowed under your jurisdiction, but what about child marriage in other parts of the country?
A. Chiefs from other districts come to me to find out what it is, and I convince them not to allow it in their communities. But there are also other chiefs, for example in Salima, who when they heard the news came and shouted at me saying that our tradition allowed it, and that what did I believe. In the education of girls, as a boss, you have to try to do the best for them, so I begged them to stop allowing such practices, but they refused, hiding behind tradition and claiming that it was a very old culture. I was even told that my family was stupid for electing a woman as the traditional authority.
Q. Cyclone Freddy brought with it the destruction of many crops, multiplied food insecurity and poverty, and forced many women into prostitution. Did it also affect child marriages?
A. Yes. It hadn't happened for a long time, but after the cyclone two underage girls came to see me and told me that their mothers told them they had to get married and leave school. I went to talk to them and made sure to send those girls back to school myself. The mothers told me that they did it because they had nothing to eat and that was why they wanted to marry them, but I told them that they should go and annul the marriages that very day. After Freddy, I reminded the bosses again that I didn't want any nonsense to happen and not to relax because there would be consequences. The cyclone caused a lot of destruction and affected many women and the continuity of girls' education, but in this area it has not been so noticeable, as we have been implementing this system for many years. No girl is going to marry under my jurisdiction.
I have removed from power 62 of the more than 300 chiefs in my jurisdiction
Q. And how do you find out that these marriages happen? There are almost a million people in Dedza...
A. I have a lot of people spread all over my territory. They are my spies, who tell me everything that happens. When I get complaints that this or that boss is allowing it, I talk to their family about someone else taking the position. That's when they get scared. I have gone so far as to remove 62 of the more than 300 chiefs in my jurisdiction from power, and I only return it to them when they commit to arrest it. Over the years, I realized that early marriages and school dropouts were linked. To tackle this problem, I set up committees to motivate girls not to drop out of school and to bring back those who had dropped out. I also started all the work of anonymous sources to inform me of these bad practices. So far, I have stopped 199 marriages in my area and more than 2,500 in my entire jurisdiction.
Q. Do you think that women in Malawi are still perceived as inferior in relation to men?
A. The trend is slowly fading with the intervention of bosses, campaigns to get girls back to school, and the work of organizations fighting for their rights. In Dedza, there is no boss or father who can deny their daughter the right to go to school: in my area that has been eliminated, but we still have a very long way to go as a society.
Q. Why are there still families that allow such marriages?
A. The answer is rooted in poverty. The groom's family, as a dowry, gives money or animals to the bride's family, and that can give her momentary relief. That's the main reason. In fact, poverty remains the main obstacle to the implementation of my work promoting girls' education. The most difficult families find poverty as an excuse to marry off their daughters and take them out of school. As leaders, we need to work to ensure that all girls are educated.
Q. Is kusasa fumbi (dusting) still practiced?
A. Kusasa fumbi is an ancient practice that consists of preparing girls for adulthood, in which anamkungwi (counselors) teach young girls after their first menstruation how to clean, cook and have sex in order to be good wives. Girls are forced to have sex with men calledfisi (hyenas), exposing themselves to sexually transmitted diseases. These rituals don't happen in my area anymore since I've put spies. A few years ago it did happen, so I went to those places, interrogated the physi and forced them to stop because when I was appointed chief I set out to put an end to the practice. Since then, there have been no cases here, but it continues to happen in other parts of the country. We have a lot of work ahead of us.
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