The Sunday Mail
President R G Mugabe
Government could soon outlaw any marriage with persons below the age of 18, President Mugabe has said.
The Head of State and Government said this in Harare yesterday amid national debate on court precedents allowing children as young as 12 years old to legally consent to sexual intercourse and even marriage.
Addressing child parliamentarians at the official opening of the 23rd Session of the Junior Parliament, which coincided with the Day of the African Child commemorations at Parliament Building, President Mugabe said parents were central to stopping early marriages.
His sentiment was in line with the Day of the African Child theme of “25 years after the adoption of the African Children’s Charter: Accelerating our Collective Efforts to End Child Marriage in Africa”.
The President said: “Government is considering aligning our laws relating to marriages to forbid the marriage of young people below the age of 18. I don’t know whether we can succeed, (but) I think the family, the parents will succeed much more than the Government by teaching usefulness of education to their children; that after Form Four, do some course. It’s not just going to university which is the possible root to higher development.
“At least do some course, teaching course, professional course, agricultural course, health course, etcetera. This alignment (of the law on marriage age) which the Government is willing to do is in sync with our Constitution. We are, therefore, urging chiefs, traditional leaders and other community leaders to sensitise their communities and encourage young people to stay in school.”
The Marriage Act (Chapter 5:07) provides that a girl between the age of 16 and 18 may, with the joint consent of her mother and father, enter a civil marriage. The Act prohibits marriage of girls below the age of 16.
However, court rulings have allowed girls as young as 12 to get married, a situation that has triggered widespread opposition and calls for realignment of all necessary legislation to ensure child marriages are stopped.
President Mugabe said Zimbabwe’s child marriage statistics, among the highest in the world, were worrying.
The Zimbabwe Demographic Health Survey (2010-2011) says 33 percent of women aged 20-49 were married before reaching 18 years of age.
And the Zimbabwe Multi-Indicator Cluster Survey (2014) reported that about 24,5 percent girls aged between 15 and 19-years-old were aleady married or in union, compared to 1,7 percent of boys in that demographic.
“So you can see girls go first, the boys stay longer. Some girls go into polygamy, some are just taken,” President Mugabe said.
He also bemoaned the practice of treating young girls as adults.
“That’s what they say. Ane mazamu zvino akugona kuchata, aiwa haasati akura. Ehe, and the boys and senior men start engaging with the girls at (that) age. It is clear that we must do more to ensure that our society allows young women to grow and reach their fullest potential,” he said.
“Child marriages cause irreparable damage to the growth of young people while early marriages permanently rob the married youngsters (of) the valuable experience of childhood.
“It also denies them their right to personal development which includes education. If you are going to get married at 16, 17, 18 we say you will not have gone to a higher institution. You might have gone to O-Level, but nowadays O-Level is the base, it is the foundation of real education.”
President Mugabe challenged pupils to aim high.
On the Day of the African Child, the President chronicled the events in apartheid South Africa that led to the 1976 students’ uprising in Soweto.
He said power struggles between the Dutch and British had seen the former push for more recognition, including promoting use of Afrikaans ahead of English.
“So they wanted Afrikaans to be taught and schools in areas which are Zulu-speaking, Xhosa-speaking, Suthu-speaking, Venda-speaking etcetera. They were saying you don’t teach English first, your language first, but you must teach Afrikaans; every school must learn Afrikaans compulsorily and these young students organised themselves to protest against the compulsory imposition of Afrikaans.
“(About) 20 000 African students were protesting against being forced to learn Afrikaans language in all South African schools. And what did they (the apartheid government) do? They sent police armed to the teeth and mowed down the students.”
President Mugabe said such brute force was similar to that unleashed by Rhodesian forces against Zimbabwean liberation fighters and refugees in Mozambique and Zambia before Independence in 1980.
He narrated the abhorrent sights he saw in camps like Chimoio and Tete after they were bombed by Ian Smiths’ settler government.
“We had classes, very good classes … And then one day (when) we never expected any trouble at all, planes come and bombed (the camps). We had classes under trees and when you looked at the site afterwards you would see (a) little arm strewn there, (book) pages thrown everywhere, leg and shoe and so on.
“That also happened in Tete, it happened also in Zambia where you had Zipra and we lost thousands. We lost those who were just refugees. It was horrible.”
President Mugabe implored child parliamentarians to be Zimbabwe’s vanguard and to educate their peers on the importance of the country’s Independence.
