The ManicaPost
| THE vice of early child marriages – which this year as revealed by the Minister of Primary and Secondary Education Dr Lazarus Dokora – has robbed the country’s education of 4 500 minors, must be condemned as unacceptable and never to be repeated. |
Early this year the Supreme Court outlawed early marriages in a judicious verdict that we thought would open a window for the girl child to enjoy optimal health with full protection of society.
These offences are tainting our image as a nation and portray us as wanton violators of young girls’ fundamental rights. Our brutalised reputation can only be redeemed by fighting the scourge with both blood and iron. No man should impose his erotic ego on a minor and be allowed to go scot free after haemorrhaging and devouring innocent children.
All such monsters must be locked up in jail and the keys thrown in hell.
The Constitution of Zimbabwe is the supreme law of the land, binding everyone without regard for culture, ethnicity, tribe, religion, and region.
Regrettably, we have today departed from the biblical script that promotes the three pillars of good governance; namely, the marrying of morals, ethics and legality into a package that promotes decency, fair play, and equality.
Only the return to morals, ethics and values of unhu/ubunthu, and rule of law by every citizen of Zimbabwe will create soft landing of the girl child whose current crash landing is guaranteed by an irrational fire fighting approach.
Early marriage is both physically and psychologically injurious. A young girl lacks guts to negotiate safe sex and is perpetually exposed to serious health risks like premature pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and, most dangerously, HIV and AIDS, cervical cancer, death during childbirth and obstetric fistulas. Her girl’s offspring is also at risk of premature birth and death.
It is awkward. The impact is so adverse.
The girl child must only opt to marry after completing her studies, after maturing, and upon an intrinsic and informed conviction of her future rather than that imposed by their families and communities.
Education is a dynamic for transformation. It is a tool to empower girls to choose and create their own futures. Zimbabwe cannot afford to live in the shadows of a past that was only possible through sheer brute imposition of male egos and chicanery on young girls.
NO! Early child marriage is an unashamed evil that has no supportable reasons for continuation.
Men have tried to raise the trump cards of their entrenched religious and cultural practices to justify their indulgence in harmful early marriages, but the truth is they deserve a very big stick.
The role of parents in bringing up their children needs revisiting. The tempering with corporal punishment that served to groom children into responsible adults has meant that parents are housing imbeciles that have the protection of the law, with parents that want the best for their children getting into trouble with the law.
For starters, the concept of no sex before marriage that was the flagship that served as insurance against discord and disharmony in a newly founded home is being treated by human rights activists as infringement of the rights and choices of an individual. The giving with one hand and taking away with the other has created a disoriented society that is persuaded to ignore the law as inimical to their being as a cultural people.
The critical role of parents has been usurped by their own children, who are highly educated, and are now teaching them to behave and even threatening them with unspecified action should the children judge their own parents as erring and disrespectful. Our highly sophisticated culture even allowed for complete strangers to discipline an erring child, with no anticipation for reprisals by the biological parents or State.
Indeed, when children were still children, they operated as community property and community responsibility, and were amenable to discipline and correction. It was an easy job to be a parent because any adult was accorded that status over any child.
Today, neither the parent nor the extended family has over riding authority and power over their children as society has completely usurped the God-given role of the parent that is by nature, sanctified.
