There is something deeply broken about a country where an old woman can be burned alive, an elderly man hacked to death by his own relatives, and the nation simply moves on.

Andrew Kavala: my heart bleeds

No outrage.
No urgency.
No justice.

Just another coffin lowered into the ground while another police file gathers dust somewhere in a forgotten office.

More than 300 elderly Malawians have been murdered in the last 10 years over witchcraft accusations. Three hundred lives. Three hundred mothers. Fathers. Grandparents. Human beings who once carried this nation on their backs.

People who raised children, cultivated fields, built homes, paid taxes, prayed for families and survived the hardest chapters of Malawi’s history are now dying in the most humiliating and barbaric ways imaginable.

Beaten with sticks.
Stoned by mobs.
Burned alive.
Murdered by nephews, grandchildren and neighbours.

And the most painful part is not only the killings themselves.

It is the silence that follows.

It is the unbearable realization that when old people die in Malawi, the justice system seems to yawn.

Andrew Kavala asked the question many Malawians are now afraid to answer honestly: Why are these cases ignored?

Why do murder cases involving elderly people move so slowly? Why are investigations abandoned? Why are suspects arrested with loud press statements only for prosecutions to disappear quietly in the dark?

Why does the system suddenly become “underfunded” when the victim is an old woman from a village?

Yet when the victim is politically connected, wealthy, famous or useful to those in power, the machinery of justice moves swiftly.

Police investigate quickly.
Courts prioritize hearings.
Statements are released.
Resources are found.

So what exactly is different about elderly victims?

Is their blood cheaper?

Has old age become a condition that disqualifies someone from receiving justice?

These are painful questions, but Malawi must confront them honestly.

Because what is happening is no longer simple negligence. It is institutional abandonment.

A nation is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable people. And right now, Malawi is failing its elderly citizens in the cruelest way possible.

Imagine surviving 70 years only to die because someone accused you of causing rain delays or lightning through witchcraft.

Imagine your final moments being filled not with dignity, but with terror — attacked by people you once fed, carried on your back, or protected as children.

Then imagine your killers walking free because your case is “not a priority.”

This should disturb every Malawian with a conscience.

The elderly are not statistics. They are our history. They are living libraries. They are the generation that sacrificed so others could stand.

And yet today, many old people live in fear inside the very communities they helped build.

Some sleep alone because their own relatives suspect them. Others are chased from villages, stripped naked, assaulted or publicly humiliated simply for growing old.

What kind of nation normalizes this?

What kind of justice system allows more than 300 elderly people to be slaughtered while case files rot untouched?

The silence of institutions is becoming as dangerous as the killers themselves.

When police delay investigations, when prosecutors fail to pursue cases, when courts allow files to stagnate endlessly, they send one horrifying message to society: elderly lives do not matter.

And criminals are listening.

That is why the killings continue.

Impunity breeds bloodshed.

Every unresolved murder becomes permission for the next attack.

Malawians must stop treating these killings as distant village stories. This is a national moral crisis.

Churches must speak louder. Traditional leaders must act. Communities must reject witchcraft accusations that are being used as death sentences against vulnerable elderly people.

And law enforcers must be forced to answer difficult questions.

Where are the prosecutions?
Where are the convictions?
Where are the updates on the hundreds of unresolved cases?

A government that cannot protect its elderly citizens cannot claim to protect human dignity.

The tears of old mothers matter.
The fear of old fathers matters.
The blood of elderly Malawians matters.

And until this country begins treating these murders with the urgency they deserve, Malawi will continue carrying the shame of a nation where growing old has quietly become a death sentence.

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