Forced Marriage in Zimbabwe — A Silent Assassin
What is the life trajectory of a thirteen year-old girl condemned to a forced marriage? In Zimbabwe - a country plagued by dire economic circumstance, the answer is as dark a fate as one dares to imagine. Linia Hambure, a Fellow at Teach for Zimbabwe knows all too well what peril befalls young women in her country when left to society’s own devices.
There exists an undercurrent in every community — borne either by tradition or simply collective belief, which influences the way people think and more importantly, how they act with regard to certain matters. These undercurrents are by definition, not visible on the surface. It is the effects that they cause which reveal themselves.
Linia and her organisation AYAAM (African Young And Abused Mothers) have spent the past few years trying to battle the havoc that such effects wreak on young girls, their wellbeing, and on society as a whole. The past few years have been focused on carefully building and implementing a targeted strategy — one that renders a malicious and sinister practice powerless. A custom that operates in the shadows, but still quietly exists and involves nearly an entire community leads to the interpretation that the practice is almost, horrifyingly, agreeable.
A Sinister Cycle
Dr. Siwela, the co-founder and current CEO of Teach for Zimbabwe opines upon the tragic state of affairs surrounding young girls and education in the country. She recalls how her own mother, who had her when she was in school at only sixteen years old, was uprooted from her education and thrust into single motherhood — a task of immense magnitude for a physically and mentally unprepared teenager. According to UNICEF, one woman out of three in Zimbabwe aged 20 to 49 was married before the age of 18. One-third of maternal deaths are amongst adolescent girls.
“How can a 13 year-old look after another man? And not say no to sex even if it is painful?” The questions by Dr. Siwela are uncomfortable, and unfortunate; but also spectacularly relevant.
For a young woman just entering teen age, forced or “coerced” marriages make it so that life is a moving treadmill with a sharp-toothed bear trap at the end of it. Girls aged between 12 and 17 onwards are pulled out of school, and handed over in marriage to a man who often already harbours multiple wives, with little intention of supporting any of them. The girl is expected to fall in line with the duties, chores and responsibilities of an alien household, while also bearing children even though they are under the legal age of consent in Zimbabwe, which is 16. The legal age for marriage is eighteen.
Most times Linia says, the previous wives are older, with more experience and wherewithal to deal with the responsibilities and service that is expected of them in the household. The newer, younger brides are still children abruptly married off to a forty year-old man, and shall invariably fail to live up to the unrealistic expectations of cooking, cleaning, and managing a stranger’s family. Many of the girls are sexually abused by their counterparts regularly.
This drastic shift leaves the young women shell shocked and unable to cope with any of the insurmountable expectations, which ultimately ends in divorce. By this time, many of the girls are already either pregnant or with a babe in arms. They are now on the streets, with no education to speak of, no source of sustenance and no support from either family. This culminates in them having no choice but to resort to prostitution — a dangerous and outcast profession in the country. At this point, even the victim’s family has cut ties with their child due to concerns of repute and honour. This is the end of the line, and it is where a victim’s fate is sealed with almost complete certainty, to wander the dark nights alone with her child in search of sustenance, at the mercy of the world.
A Deeper Problem
Harrowingly, the sense of ordeal does not end. When asked about the legal system and what it does to curb this menace, Ms. Linia states that the system merely punishes, but does not pacify. Perpetrators, if caught, are incarcerated for breaking laws on age of consent, marriage or for abuse; but the rehabilitation measures for victims are close to nil.
Most of the organisations in this space also focus solely on finding and bringing the culprits to justice, but the victims are forgotten as this superficial justice is meted out. This indicates that the empathy for the young girls subjected to such cruel and premeditated engagement is nearly non-existent, with the actual repercussions of the act lying raw, abandoned and unaddressed. A large number of such cases go unreported, never seeing the light of day, as the teenagers are either timid or scared to go against their families for fear of dishonouring their name, especially in cases involving sexual abuse.
An instance narrated by Linia which indicates the extent of the problem is that of a school-going girl who was sexually abused and molested by one of the teachers in her school, over the course of several months. The girl did not reveal her horrifying secret and simply endured the abuse quietly. It was only when she became pregnant, and her offspring was nearly two years old, under pressure from her family that she finally struck up the courage to reveal what had transpired, for fear of bringing dishonour upon her family or being put to blame.
AYAAM & its Mandate
What started out as just a few friends looking to help young women trapped in forced marriages, AYAAM now supports a sizable number of girls in this predicament, while also developing plans for how to induce income generation skills so the ladies can support themselves and their offspring. The core focus however, is training — which equips the young girls with psychological weapons and self-esteem building practices which eventually make them self sufficient and prepared to deal with anything that comes their way. The organisation is also a safe haven to discuss and report any untoward incidents that may occur. The acrid nature of the problem and its deep-rooted tendrils means that a direct approach is not always possible. Custom, however heinous, cannot be uprooted overnight. It requires a calculated and constant approach, which focuses primarily on the individual that needs it the most.
Linia remembers how while most women were ecstatically supportive of their endeavour, some male members of society were not as conducive. They believed it to be an infringement of their rights, and that this would teach young girls not to respect the sanctity of marriage. In actuality, the practice is not only a borderline human rights violation, it incinerates the gleaming potential that a girl child has to become something, anything, on her own terms, reducing them to a mere commodity to be traded for misplaced honour and tradition. Linia Hambure says that it was this crushed potential that she saw running rampant amongst the women around her that kick-started her effort. Teach for Zimbabwe is actively endeavouring to widen the scope of education for young girls, thereby making sure that the retention rate of adolescent females is pushed up, to combat societal inefficacy and gender biases.
AYAAM is a movement borne out of unfortunate necessity, wherein the country’s framework has let a deviant undercurrent slip through the cracks and manifest itself at the cost of a young girl’s freedom, safety and the right over her own body. AYAAM works toward a stronger future, one that encourages a collective effort through example, to safeguard the interests of adolescent women and keep them from the vicious cycle of being condemned into a forced marriage.
References:
https://www.unicef.org/zimbabwe/end-child-marriage-empower-women
