Madonna is back in Malawi to adopt a 4-year old girl called Mercy and daggers are drawn. Her critics accuse her of behaving like a “rich bully” and using her wealth and celebrity to “fast-track” Malawi’s adoption process and "manipulate" the country’s adoption laws. Some critics are calling Madonna’s latest adoption bid “orphan-shopping”.
She is even being accused of "stealing" the baby. A certain Liz Hunt, writing in the Telegraph, calls Madonna “self-obsessed, ball-breaking, humourless control freak”. She calls Madonna’s body “fatless” and “sinewy”, her face “pointy” and “feline”.
What exactly is the cause of all this raw anger and apparent disgust with Madonna and her latest adoption bid?
Madonna is a rich white woman adopting a poor black African child. That is the issue here.
Opponents of mixed-race unions and families will always invent seemily plausible arguments to mask their racial biases. Joining the Madonna-bashing frenzy, Save The Children UK suggests that children should be kept in the care of their extended families or within their communities. Nonsense! The extended, solid, African family of yesterday is on its way out.
- Deepening poverty and AIDs are ripping apart the traditional social support networks across the continent
- In Malawi, 14 percent of adults are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS
- More than half of the 1 million Malawian children who have lost one or both parents have been orphaned by AIDS
- One in five Malawian children is an orphan
- One in five children in Malawi doesn’t live past the age of five
- Malawi’s average life expectancy is 48
- Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, with an average household income of $160 a year
- Almost twelve million children are orphaned by AIDS in Africa today
Would you think twice if you had half the opportunity to pluck a child out of this desperate situation and give them a stable home and solid foundation for the future?
Frankly, Madonna doesn’t deserve this abuse. Her shortcomings aside, she gives back to Malawi a lot more than the average Western adopter gives. Her Raising Malawi organization, raises funds to provide food, shelter, education and health care for children.
Madonna visits Malawi regularly and takes David, her other adopted Malawian child, with her, ensuring that he retains ties with his African roots. Her visits and charitable work puts Malawi in the global media spotlight.
I was born and raised in Zimbabwe, Malawi’s neighbor to the South. I’m now based in Toronto, Canada, and heavily involved with millions of individual Westerners who are concerned about the problems in Africa. It’s easy to tell when an individual is in it for personal glory. I have never met Madonna but when I look at her photos while on visits to Malawi, all I see is a human being genuinely concerned with the welfare of other human beings.