MALAWI POLICE WOMEN’S NETWORK

Police women in the Malawi Police Service are grappling to establish a women’s network. This is an association of female police officers that will aim to improve the lot of its members. In their draft constitution they state that their goal is to ‘optimize the position of female police officers in the police system by identifying and raising awareness and understanding of issues affecting women in the Malawi Police Service, developing a network of professional and social contacts locally, regionally and internationally, facilitating the sharing of information on issues affecting women and contributing towards the continuous development of its members.

In July 2013 the network conducted a series of consultative workshops to elicit contributions towards the draft constitution. I was selected to be one of the officers to critique the draft policy document on 4^th July 2013 at Kasungu Inn. I decided this was the opportunity for me to practise and sharpen my policy analysis skills. This was the last of the four consultative meetings that they had conducted. A number of interesting topics were discussed. Among them, we were asked to think out factors that affect the performance of police women in the Malawi Police Service. I raised an issue which is at the core of organisational performance, but which everybody chooses to avoid due to its sensitivity. This is the issue of relationships between officers. Service Standing Order (SSO) 31 governs the conduct of police women in the Malawi Police Service in terms of: discipline, when they may marry, when they may fall pregnant, the uniforms they must wear, and the type of makeup they are allowed to wear. The document fails to provide adequate guidance on officer/officer marriages.

Service Standing Order (SSO) 31provides that 

“Any officer, of whatever rank, who illegally impregnates any police woman or has an unlawful love affair with a police woman or causes her to break the conditions of her probationary period, is to be dealt with for a breach of discipline”. 

From this SSO, it is clear that officer-to-officer marriages are not prohibited (provided they are heterosexual), and as expected, so many of them have sprouted since 1972 when the first cohort of police women was recruited into the Malawi Police Service. The regulation also leaves a host of important questions unanswered. For instance, it does not say what constitutes illegal impregnation of a police woman or what an unlawful love affair with a police woman is. In addition, the policy implicitly assumes that the balance of power would always be in favour of a male police officer, a situation which is being challenged by current trends. In other words, SSO 31 fails to anticipate situations where a senior female police officer would be involved in a love affair with a junior male officer.

What makes this topic sensitive is that many senior male police officers have married junior female officers and this has a bearing on organisational performance. This is most apparent at police stations situated near the national police headquarters in the capital, Lilongwe. These stations are disproportionately populated by female police officers whose husbands hold positions of command at the headquarters. According to our organizational culture, wives of officers enjoy the full compliments of their husbands’ positions in their interactions with each other and with other officers. This makes such stations difficult to govern. Station commanders complain about such women’s absenteeism on unconvincing grounds, laziness, poor conduct and a lot other allegations. Stories are told of retaliatory behavior when commanding officers try to discipline wives of senior officers. Unfortunately, in spite of all these challenges, nobody would want to move a debate on this issue.

When I raised this issue, participants to the workshop, who were all police officers, brought up crazy scenarios which may happen but which have not been carefully thought through and therefore are not reflected in any organizational policies. For example, would it be acceptable if the two top posts in the organizational hierarchy were filled by husband and wife? And what would happen if a female inspector general or a female commissioner married a male constable? Perhaps these scenarios are extreme and improbable in the foreseeable future, but at the local station level we are already slowly seeing situations where two key station portfolios are held by husband and wife. For instance, at one station, the commander and the deputy commander are husband and wife respectively and at another, the commander and the head of CID are spouses.

I think marriages and relationships between officers cannot and should not be stopped. One outstanding advantage of these marriages is that they are efficient in the use of institutional housing which is already in short supply. However, I think a healthy debate must be encouraged now and different scenarios and their possible implications should be brought to light. I think this is especially expedient now that funny permutations are beginning to show at some stations. Policies should be crafted to limit the adverse effects of such marriages.
This workshop has excited my interest in policy analysis. Of late I am being called upon to analyse different policies. For instance, I am currently required to analyse and comment on the Reserve Bank of Malawi's Counterfeit Currency Management Policy as well as Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Guidelines of Policies on Immunities and Privileges for Diplomatic Staff. It is therefore clear that policy analysis skills will be very important to me. I therefore plan to privately study policy analysis systematically. I think with the discipline I have gained as a self-directed distance learner, I will be able to achieve this.