Elsewhere, news that children as young as 10 are being withdrawn from classes and forced to become mothers — as was earlier this week reported to be happening at Somerby settlement, near Harare — would have sparked a huge outcry by women’s groups, the human rights movement, media and public in general. But not in Zimbabwe!
Here, it seems, we would rather devote our energies and time following the latest privileged gossip coming from Wikileaks about who said what about President Robert Mugabe or Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
The fact that the young girls forced into marriage will be subjected to multiple-rape and other forms of sexual abuse because as minors they are legally unable to give consent to sex seems of little concern to us.
Neither do we seem bothered by the fact that once the girls’ education is cut short because they have to become wives, their overall development is immediately compromised as they are forced into premature adulthood without any meaningful education or survival skills.
Beyond bearing children, they basically can’t do much else. In fact, it is a well-established fact that child-brides are more vulnerable to poverty than girls. In other words, the young girls married off at Somerby have been effectively denied their chance in life. What an injustice!
The 20 cases reported at Somerby are only the tip of the iceberg, if the words of Albert Madzongo, a community leader at the settlement, are anything to go by. "We have several of these cases in this community and something must be done to curb this problem, which has gone unreported,” he told The Herald.
Just how big is the problem of child marriages? We will never know for sure. We can only speculate that it must be fairly widespread for it to occur even within shouting distance of the capital city.
However, we can all be assured of one terrible reality: there many more girls at Somerby and elsewhere in the country who will not be able to finish their education because they have been forced into marriage. What an indictment against all of us.
Post published in: Editor: Wilf Mbanga