Cape Town — Madonna is back in Malawi, seeking to adopt another child from the country – despite controversy over her adoption of a child there three years ago.
Local media outlets reported Monday that the pop star had arrived at Lilongwe International Airport on a private jet on Sunday for a hearing in the High Court in Lilongwe on the adoption of a four-year-old child. The Nyasa Times reported that Madonna would attend the hearing, to be presided over Monday by Judge Esmie Chombo.
Capital FM said she had chosen a child from an orphanage in the small town of Thyolo, in the south of Malawi.
The radio station also reported that she had visited Chinkhota village, near Lilongwe, where she had bought land on which to build an orphanage, and that while she was in the country she expected to visit the father of the first child she adopted.
Although the Nyasa Times said that many ordinary Malawians – and President Bingu wa Mutharika – welcomed her decision to adopt a second Malawian child, local and international human rights groups opposed it.
The national co-ordinator of the Human Rights Consultative Committee, Mavuto Bamusi, told Capital FM that since Parliament had been dissolved ahead of elections, the adoption needed to be halted until it could meet to amend the law. The station said the Malawi Human Rights Commission was also opposed to the adoption.
In Britain, the Save the Children Fund UK said adoption should be considered only if a child was genuinely an orphan, and all other alternatives had been exhausted.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
"The best place for a child is in his or her family in their home community," said Save the Children spokesman Dominic Nutt. "Most children in orphanages have one parent still living, or have an extended family that can care for them in the absence of their parents."
Nutt added: "International adoption is also big business in some countries. Unscrupulous adoption agencies may profit from the sale of children, without ensuring the child is eligible for adoption, or adequately vetting the adoptive parents… We urge any celebrity to set an example, to follow internationally agreed procedures designed to protect the child, and to ensure that the child in question has no other options in their home community."
An unnamed government official told a Malawian newpaper in December that as a divorcée Madonna would find it difficult to adopt in Malawi again.
"The truth of the matter is that it is almost impossible for a single parent to adopt a Malawian child and those celebrities who think that they can bend the law to adopt children here when they are single parents are totally wrong," the official said.
When she adopted a Malawian child in 2006, NGOs suggested that the pop star and the Malawi government had "bent the rules" to allow the adoption.
