Malawi politician pushes for world orphans day

Hetherwick Ntaba

By Kim Se-jeong

Hetherwick Ntaba, 72, from Malawi, is a surgeon. Over the past 30 years, he’s also been active in politics, serving as different ministers, a political party leader and the spokesman for the president.

Last week in Korea, he called for the establishment of a U.N. World Orphans Day.

“When you look at 150 million orphans worldwide and how much they suffer, there is an obvious need to

set up this world day. Orphans are a very unfortunate group. They are voiceless and vote-less, and because of that they are often ignored by politicians,” Ntaba told The Korea Times on Wednesday.

Ntaba flew to Korea to attend a high-level forum on the subject organized by the Korea Soongsil Kongsaeng Social Welfare Foundation, a civic organization.

The forum was on Friday, and the same conference took place in Japan earlier this week with the same foundation as the organizer. The foundation is behind the effort to establish the U.N. observance.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines orphans as those whose parents are dead.

Ntaba does not agree with that narrow definition. “Kids who are raised only by a single parent are also orphans,” because the lack of care and protection they receive with a single parent can be significantly damaging to their development.

He said in Malawi, orphans are often found in rural villages where they lose their parents to malnutrition, AIDS or malaria. And they are primarily raised by uncles or grandmothers.

The politician called on the government, the international organizations and non-governmental organizations to provide assistance to single parents.

Ntaba grew up without his father around. Raised by his mother alone, he still remembers her struggle to feed six of her children every day.

In Korea, orphans are often associated with adoptees. Many orphans are abandoned by teenage mothers, who choose not to raise them because of the stigma associated with being a young single mother. The kids are often put up for international adoption, and their numbers are among the worlds highest.

Ntaba was appointed as a personal physician to Hastings Banda, the first president of Malawi, in 1977. That opened the door to his political career.

The first president left office in 1994, but his successors recruited Ntaba back to their Cabinets. He was spokesperson for the third president, Bingu wa Mutharika, until he died of heart attack in April 2012.

Currently, he is vice president of Malawi’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, and is leaving soon for the United Kingdom where he will be Malawi’s top representative.