Records of mankind’s sojourn on Planet Earth have always shown a predisposition of global societies to favour men over women. In some androcentric countries, women have no rights at all and are generally treated as less than animals; they subsist in lifelong servitude to the domineering males within their families and communities, and are even cruelly killed for the most minor infraction – real, imagined, or concocted – of the harsh and punitive rules imposed on them. Additionally, they are allowed no defence of themselves.
Brutality against women is recorded daily in patriarchal societies worldwide, and a news report coming out of Ghana relates that a woman who stole plantains to feed her hungry babies was stoned to death and dumped in a plantain farm at Aboaso in the Kwabre East Municipal District of the Ashanti Region. It was reported that Ghanaian Police couldn’t locate the children.
Anitha Qualis, a 35-year-old mother of four, who was found with 503 grams of marijuana in her possession in Guyana, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and fined $754,000 by Magistrate Crystal Lambert.
Her lawyer’s impassioned submissions that the accused should be given no custodial sentence on compassionate grounds went unheeded. He revealed that Qualis was deprived of having opportunities in life to advance herself and explained that she did not attend secondary school and was a victim of sexual abuse, as a result of which she had her first child, who is now 16, when she (Qualis) was 15 years old.
She also bore three other children, ages 10, 14 and 15, during the course of an abusive six-year relationship during which she was belittled and abused and kept down by her long-time partner, who eventually abandoned her and their children.
The Attorney added that after his client lost her job at a snackette, she felt an “irresistible compulsion” to do all things necessary to feed her starving children, and he also explained that Qualis has had no criminal involvement save for this incident. For all of these reasons, when the Magistrate handed down the sentence, the lawyer applied for the suspension of the sentence under the Criminal Law Reform Act, Cap.11:05 which would have meant that Qualis would be released and if she reoffends, then she would be re-incarcerated. The Magistrate, a woman, refused the application.
During her court appearance on September 22, Qualis told the court that: “I accepted the weed, I am a mother of four… I decided to try a thing to provide for my children.”
How does a jobless mother, abandoned by the children’s father, feed her children? Only a mother with starving children would understand the compulsions that drive these women to break the laws of society. And do the guardians of the law, like this magistrate, and the people who stoned the Ghanaian mother to death take into consideration the fate of the children, who are consequently abandoned to the mercies of an uncaring, ruthless society, and may themselves be forced to break the law to survive?
Guyanese have stopped being our brother’s (and sister’s) keepers, because, in many communities, neighbours witnessing a continuum of, and escalating instances of abuse, refuse to become involved. They prefer to enjoy, as entertainment, the unfolding tragedy, even adding to it with malicious rumour-mongering and strife-making, because the titillation of feuds and wars within families find a corresponding resonance in the dark nuances resident in every soul, and the average person refuses to rise above their more decadent equivalencies to achieve a higher plane of thoughts and actions, enough to maybe intercede – and probably save, a family from ultimate destruction.
There needs to be more stringent international vigilance and interventions to protect women in androcentric societies, because children become victims, which ultimately negatively impacts entire societies. Conventions do not suffice to protect victims.
The abuse, oftentimes escalating to murder of women, leaving children motherless and effectively fatherless, also often has the tragic consequence of the orphans becoming victims of paedophiles and other degenerates of societies.
While fathers often have no qualms in abandoning their children to the fates of destiny, mothers would go to any lengths to protect and provide for their offspring, as in the case of Anitha Qualis and the Ghanaian woman.
Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall has promised to revamp the sentencing guidelines in Guyana’s legal system; mayhap women like Qualis would be dealt with mercifully, with the Human Services and Social Security Ministry providing empowerment and job opportunities for such women.
