By Memory Mudzani
Child marriage is a widespread problem in most African countries, that seriously violatedms girls’ human rights.
Child marriage is any formal marriage or informal union where one or both partners are under the age of 18 years and it mostly affects young girls as they are the ones who are commonly exposed to statutory rape.
In an interview with Kwedu News, Alice Tagwira from Zheera Trust said our biggest challenge in Africa has always been and is patriarchy which conditioned women and girls that their entire existence revolves around marriage.
“Our biggest challenge in African countries like Zimbabwe has always been and is patriarchy which conditioned women and girls that their entire existence revolves around marriage, of course we do have a number of women who are working up from this nightmare but there are some parts and areas where information is much limited, the knowledge we have is not spread out to some remote area,” said Tagwira
“We are living in the information era but the information is not equally distributed ,it’s not everywhere ,it’s still limited ,workshops ,seminars held in towns and the information we learn from internet is a limitation to those in grassroots areas and this is creating a gap between women and girls from grassroots areas and those from urban areas so clearly we don’t not operate at the same level ,we are miles away from how they view the life of a woman ,they still believe that the life of a woman revolves around marriage,bearing children and death which is very wrong .”
Tagwira also said that we really need Women organizations abd government to make its way down there to the neglected or grassroots areas and teach women and girls about individuality, self-importance, confidence and self-esteem which will help in fighting against early child marriages .
Pretty Ncube a women activist from Zimbabwe association of churches ZACH also encourages parents especially those in grassroots areas to give their girl child a second chance to life in line with fighting against early child marriages which result in many cases of domestic violence.
“Let’s help our community in fighting against early child marriages by understanding our children as parents and also give them a second chance to life because if we force them in these early marriages we are subjecting them to gender based violence as most of them are being rejected by their husbands because of pregnancy and they end up committing suicide as a result of
being unable to defend themselves” said Ncube
She also said that girls that marry as children drop out of school and their future will be short- changed as will the future of their communities.
Tagwira also supported what Ncube said when she told this publication that young teenage girls from grassroots areas need organizations that can stand in the gap and fight for them because girls in these communities are groomed in a patriarchy environment where they see nothing wrong when a child is getti gmarried at the age of sixteen because their mothers too were married at a tender age.She also said young adolescent
girl are like flowers and they are supposed to keep their nectar from the bees.
Tagwira further said that young girls from grassroots areas need to be empowered so that they will have a change of their mind sets which will encourage young girls to also help in fighting against early child marriages.
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