When one of my clients reported that her ex-husband, a police officer, was hacking her accounts, legal aid told her to “take it up with the police.” But going to the police meant walking straight into the arms of her abuser. This is what “access to justice” looks like when the system still treats digital abuse as a technical problem rather than a gendered one. Her story is not unique. When an estranged husband hacks his former wife’s accounts and spreads rumours using her private messages, that is violence. When a politician boasts on Facebook that he can share a woman’s intimate images “on request,” that is violence. These patterns are common in cases reported to the Gender and Justice Unit in Malawi – the organisation I founded and where I work.
Technology did not invent violence against women; it has only made it easier to commit and harder to escape. In Malawi’s justice system, these acts often go unprosecuted because technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) is still not treated as violence. For most Malawian women, “technology” means a shared handset or a basic phone running on low-data social media packages.
In 2015, the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority found that only 4.7% of Malawian women had internet access. That number is perhaps 10% higher now, but the majority remain locked out of full online participation. Yet these same limited platforms are where community life unfolds and where harm hides; through screenshots that move faster than justice and private images that travel across districts in minutes.
Survivors face two major barriers to addressing TFGBV: limited access to technology and the offline ridicule or violence that follows when they seek help. This second barrier is worse when the perpetrator holds public office or social power.
Two Women, Two Exposures
During a march against gender-based violence in 2017, several women carried a placard reading: “Kubadwa ndi nyini sitchimo. My pussy, my pride.” (Being born with a vagina is not a sin.) The word nyini is the only Chichewa term for vagina, yet it is treated as inherently obscene, so much so that describing female anatomy in the vernacular becomes a cultural transgression.
The shock was not only in the phrasing but in who was seen holding it. Beatrice Mateyo was photographed holding the placard and her bald, confident, and unflinching visage circulated widely, enraging a patriarchal society that deemed her characteristics “unwomanly.” While others carried the placard, public outrage fixed itself on her, on what she represented: an outspoken woman, unapologetic and unwilling to be policed.
The police arrested her for “insulting the modesty of a woman.” But the offence was not modesty; it was audibility. She was punished for speaking the unspeakable, for bringing into public view a word and a body that the law and culture both insist must remain hidden.
Months later, another woman faced a different kind of exposure and was stripped in public by political rivals for wearing opposition regalia. Her nakedness was filmed and circulated instantly. The same public that condemned Mateyo now rallied in sympathy. This woman was immediately recognised as a victim, and women across parties marched in her name.
The contrast revealed a profound contradiction at the heart of Malawian society’s relationship with women’s bodies. When a woman asserts ownership over her body, she is branded indecent; when others violate her body, she is pitied. In both cases, society denies her autonomy by either censuring her for speaking or mourning her for suffering.
These two exposures, one chosen and one forced, show how control over women’s bodies is enforced through both law and language. The moral panic around the word nyini reflects how colonial linguistic hierarchies shape respectability: English is “proper,” while the vernacular is coded as obscene. Until women can name their bodies in Chichewa without shame, linguistic colonisation continues to silence them and the boundaries of decency drawn by colonial morality leak into the politics of the digital age.
Old Laws on New Screens
The policing of women’s bodies did not begin online. To understand why my client, with a police officer ex-husband, had nowhere to turn, we must examine how the law was designed.
During the colonial era, ‘modesty’ laws pushed an idea of European sexual virtue against African promiscuity. This is where the seed of politicising and moralising Malawian women’s bodies was first planted. Once independence was established under President Banda’s regime from 1965 to 1993, that moral order was nationalised, and women’s dress and behaviour became markers of patriotism.
Today’s cyber laws are built on the same foundations. What once appeared as “Decency in Dress” regulations now re-emerge as prohibitions against “obscene suggestions” in the Electronic Transactions and Cybersecurity Act of 2016. Though drafted to modernise protection, these laws reproduce the same moral framework that shaped colonial and early independence statutes. The Cybersecurity Act criminalises “offensive communication” and “immoral content,” echoing older laws on “indecent dress” or “insulting the modesty of a woman.” These provisions end up criminalising even consensual sharing of intimate images or messages. Instead of supporting victims of TFGBV, they redirect blame toward women exercising sexual autonomy.
The medium has changed, but the mindset has not. The woman imagined by law remains modest, heterosexual and in need of supervision. Her dignity is protected only when she is a victim, never when she asserts desire. As feminist scholars like Sylvia Tamale and Oyeronke Oyewumi argue, colonial law remade African womanhood through respectability politics logic that still shapes digital rights.
A Regional Pattern
Malawi is not alone. Across the region, the same pattern repeats: archaic morality disguised as online protection. Look at Uganda. In a country long scarred by battles over women’s autonomy, the state still wields digital laws as weapons. The Computer Misuse Act (2022) is the latest tool used to silence feminist voices, but the pattern began years earlier. In 2018, before the amendment, the Act was used to muzzle Dr Stella Nyanzi, an academic and activist who dared to criticise President Museveni. Her Facebook poem was enough to get her arrested for “offensive communication.” She was later convicted of cyber harassment and given 18 months in prison, a sentence the Court of Appeal eventually overturned for lack of evidence.
Since then, the new CMA remains the tool of the old guard. Journalists from Alternative Digitalk TV were arrested for supposedly disturbing the “peace and quiet” of the President. Novelist Norman Tumuhimbise and journalist Farida Bikobere were charged with offences under the same law: offensive communication and cyberstalking. The pattern is unmistakable: laws supposedly protecting citizens online are weaponised to silence critics of those in power.
In Nigeria, the Cybercrime Act (2015) deploys sweeping terms such as “cyberstalking,” “harassment,” and “grossly offensive,” often used to target dissent. While it contains provisions on cyberbullying, it does not meaningfully address image-based sexual abuse as a breach of consent. The law still centres harm on harassment, not on the violation that truly matters: the sharing itself.
By contrast, South Africa demonstrates the potential for feminist legal reform. The Films and Publications Amendment Act (2019) criminalises non-consensual sharing of intimate images. It centres the survivor, foregrounds consent and imposes real penalties. More importantly, it acknowledges the deeper dynamics of colonialism, protectionism, and patriarchal control that fuel TFGBV. Malawi still has an opportunity to follow this path—but it requires rejecting paternalistic protectionism and embracing autonomy and consent as the foundation of digital rights.
Why Decolonisation Matters
When I began writing about TFGBV, I focused on gaps in cyber legislation. Over time, I realised the challenge is not only legal but epistemic. Malawian law still imagines women as colonial administrators did: subjects to be protected, corrected, or punished, never full owners of their bodies, data, or images.
Decolonisation requires reimagining who the law is for. It means interpreting cyber statutes alongside laws that recognise the emotional and psychological harm caused by digital abuse, such as the Gender Equality Act (GEA). The GEA was designed to promote gender equality and fill gaps in legal protections in Malawi, and it may play a role in addressing digital violence. Digital harms such as hacking, doxxing and the non-consensual sharing of intimate images can actually be treated as social harms, not merely as “cyber offences” if the law is interpreted with nuance.
Police and magistrates also require training to treat screenshots and voice notes as legitimate evidence, not gossip. Community-based mechanisms such as EmpowerLine, the Gender and Justice Unit’s toll-free platform, are crucial because they rely on the same low-tech tools women already use and trust. By enabling women to report violence through the same accessible technologies that are sometimes used against them, we can bring justice closer to those who need it most.
Toward a Feminist Digital Future
For too long, “protection” has meant controlling women “for their own good.” A decolonised approach demands a shift from protection to autonomy. Protection tells women not to post their photos; autonomy asserts that women have the right to share their images and that the harm lies in misuse, not in expression. Where protection imagines modesty as safety, autonomy recognises consent as the foundation of safety. It gives women the power to decide how their bodies and images are represented and shared.
To decolonise is to reclaim the right to speak, name, and exist publicly without apology. When a woman says “Kubadwa ndi nyini sitchimo,” she is not committing indecency; she is asserting personhood. African feminism has long recognised that the body is political, and now, the digital body is simply the newest frontier. The fight for safe digital spaces is part of the long struggle for bodily autonomy and justice. When we begin from autonomy, the law stops asking whether a woman behaved “responsibly” and starts asking why a perpetrator felt entitled to her body, her passwords, or her pictures.
Ending digital violence requires more than updating statutes; it requires a new imagination of justice. TFGBV must be recognised as gender-based violence and addressed with proper training for law enforcement and accessible reporting through SMS, radio, and toll-free lines. Most importantly, we must dismantle the colonial ideals that still police women’s bodies. If our laws are to mean anything, they must imagine women as citizens with full digital personhood, not problems to be managed.
TFGBV shows how old hierarchies adapt to new platforms. The policing that once targeted women’s dress now targets their speech; the gaze that once patrolled streets now patrols Facebook timelines. To end this cycle, we must decolonise the digital body itself. During these 16 Days of Activism, let us commit not only to awareness but to transformation. Let us rewrite our legal imagination so that a woman’s body, image, and data finally belong to her.
Sarai Chisala-Tempelhoff, Founder and Executive Director, Gender and Justice Unit (Malawi). Contributions by: Zaib Master, legal researcher (Malawi)