Talk:2011 Malawian Air Fouling Legislation

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This Article Is About Nothing of Consequence[edit]

I believe that this article has no merit, and has been written for the sole reason of discrediting George Chaponda, the Minister of Justice at the time.

The "farting" interpretation of "vitiating the air" was initiated by the anti-government press in Malawi, and sensationalised around the World by the foreign gutter press. The incompetent, Malawian authorities made no effort to inform the public of the actual wording of the Bill, or what its intended purpose was. A few days after the story had become an international one, Chaponda was giving a general interview on a radio show. At one point the interviewer started to badger Chaponda about the fictitious farting-law, and kept repeating the word "fart/farting". Chaponda became flustered, and started rambling. In confusion he said that public farting was bad, that one should go to a toilet to release it, and appeared to vigorously defend its being made illegal in the proposed Bill. His confused words were immediately pounced on by critics of himself, and the administration to which he belongs, and were elevated by them to an official statement that public farting would be made illegal.

No changes to the proposed Bill were needed, Public farting in Malawi remains legal, just as it is elsewhere in the World.

The radio interview is at http://www.malawithewarmheart.com/interviews.php?linkid=16841, and the farting nonsense begins at 20½ minutes into it.

This Wikipedia article should be deleted. Peter Nkosi (talk) 13:13, 19 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • As the main author, I can assure you that I simply came across the stub and expanded it in a lighthearted mood. I know next to nothing about Malawian politics and had no sinister intent. You could request deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. I doubt that it would be accepted. The subject is clearly notable according to the main criterion used in Wikipedia: a number of reliable independent sources took note of it. As you say, although the incident was silly it did illustrate incompetence in the reaction of the authorities, which was compounded by Chaponda's poor performance in the interview, and caused a sensation in the foreign gutter press. At a more serious level, if we start to remove articles or edit their content so they do not give offense to politicians we would be drifting into very dangerous territory. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:16, 19 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Aymatth2, thank you for explaining the origin of the article.

I want to emphasise that I was not trying to defend any politicians and that I do not care about their feelings, or if they are offended. I wanted to point out that there was never any intention of banning public farting in Malawi, despite what some of your unreliable sources may have said. If the subject is clearly notable, then it is not because of any farting-ban as such, but about how a fake story can be quickly spread around the World on the internet, being picked-up by lazy, unprofessional journalists to fill a space in their newspaper. Celebrities who need something to say, so that can get a bit of publicity in the press, then spout their 2 cents worth, giving the issue further exposure. Because "a number of reliable independent sources took note of it" does not make the story true.

The stub for this article started off with a single BBC reference (published 04-Feb), which tried to give a balanced report about the misinterpretation being put on the wording of the new law. The false story had been concocted and propagated 1½ weeks earlier by two biased articles published by Nyasa Times (NT), an insanely anti-government, on-line, and unregulated newspaper. The first article (25/26-Jan) begins with "farting" as its first word, and does not once mention the actual wording of the proposed law. The second article by NT (30-Jan), your reference #8, bragged how their first one had captured the attention of the World, but still did not mention the exact wording. That was left to the BBC article to reveal, ie "vitiating the air". Neither of the NT articles is available any longer on-line from their website, but I found them at.

First: http://testing.iq4news.com:80/feed/farting-be-punishable-local-courts

Second: http://shelleyzross.com/2011/01/31/law-and-odor-malawi-president-to-make-breaking-wind-a-crime/

I am going to let you win this debate, because I am not clever enough to understand the procedure for deleting articles. Also, you as a Wikiboss predict that I will fail to have it removed. In any case, from your talk page I see that:

"Wikipedia's goal is not to present the truth about each topic but to present what is thought about each topic, giving greatest weight to the most widely held opinions."

So, what we have here is an article written by someone for a laugh, and who knows next to nothing about Malawian politics. The justification for not deleting it will be that the false story was reported extensively on the internet, and that enough people believe it, so it must prevail, because it is far more interesting than the truth.

Finally, there is another Wikipedia article which includes this false, farting issue, viz "Traditional Courts in Malawi"; it looks like you contributed to that too. This simple villager gives up, and acknowledges that The First World Knows Best.Peter Nkosi (talk) 09:34, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • I am not sure that my village really belongs to the "First World". The people there are so primitive and childlike that even in old age they are amused by the subject of farting. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:02, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to one external link on 2011 Malawian Air Fouling Legislation. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

checkY An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 21:05, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on 2011 Malawian Air Fouling Legislation. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 12:03, 22 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:2011_Malawian_Air_Fouling_Legislation&oldid=1196594242"