The Sunday News
WE are exposed to the abuse faced by the girl child in this novel. Women are at the receiving end of all the abuse revealed here. Picking it up from where we left last week we are told that good girls had to cook for, wash for and serve properly and promptly, every male being that hung around them. The question of age did not matter.
That way, girls would grow to become fully groomed productive, reproductive and responsible wives worth paying lobola for. Such a girl would not put her people to shame if she became fortunate enough to get married. Marriage and bearing of children seemed, therefore, to be the only purpose of womanhood. The worst thing that could ever happen to a woman was to go about without a husband.
That kind of woman was looked at as an incomplete person and a major threat to other properly married women who would always look at her freedom with grave suspicion.
She was a shame to her parents and relatives and a very big shame to the ancestors. Tradition comes into play here. It is as if all this was done to please the ancestors. Diviners would then be sought to provide spiritual answers as to why the shameful daughter had failed to secure herself a husband just like every other normal woman of her age had already done. If things came to the worst, then without hesitation, beer would be brewed and beasts would be slaughtered and ancestors would be summoned to provide spiritual correction to the anomaly.
After getting married, the woman would then face the important task of bearing a male child first, for the sake of her husband’s name. All these are stringent conditions placed upon the girl child. Who determines the sex of the child born first? Nature should be allowed to take its course.
But a woman who fails to deliver as expected is subjected to verbal or at times physical abuse. The story goes on and on talking about what good girls should do. There is little talk about the boy child.
The girl child is always at the deep end with little room to manoeuvre. We hear that good girls should always be on their knees in respect whenever they are serving their brothers no matter the age. Good girls should not look into the eyes of whoever they are speaking to especially if it is a man. That kind of boldness would lead to witchcraft. Cultural beliefs are used as a tool of suppressing the girls.
Good girls were only to speak when spoken to. In other words girls were not allowed to start a conversation in the presence of man. Fatima recalls the day she was caught red handed by her father placing a plate of sadza before her brothers without genuflecting as custom called upon her to do. She was given a severe tongue lashing. Her father asked: “Little girl, who taught you to behave like that?” While trying to respond to that question another one followed.
“And who taught you to stand in front of me like that, he-e? Were you present when I was born?” Obviously that was an impossible question for her to answer. Her father also expected her to be knees down when talking to him. As if dealing with his daughter was not enough, Fatima was sent to go and call her mother. She was asked if Fatima was her daughter and she only nodded.
She was told that her daughter acted as if she was just picked from a hill where proper manners had never been seen. She was asked if that was what she taught her children. All the sins of children seem to be heaped on their mothers. Women were blamed for any wrong done by their children. The man goes on to describe how Fatima was walking past him. He says: “She walked past me with her little head hanging in the clouds like that, he-e-e, as if walking past her mother.” This sounds like the mother of the children should not be respected. He adds that she then threw down the plates of sadza before her brothers. He says she goes on to stand in front like a gum tree! He goes viral saying that is why the children grow up to become prostitutes. He says he can bet that Fatima would become yet another prostitute like her elder sister Sharai.
Sharai had been thrown out of her home by her husband. This is another form of gender based violence, women not given a chance to defend themselves but always blamed and chased away. Women are blamed for moral decadence. Men fail to control their lust and go out with prostitutes but women get all the blame and insults. Men are never referred to as prostitutes. Fatima relates a story whereby her father had fallen prey to one of the ladies of the night in Chivhu.
Story had it that her father had arrived home without his shirt and jacket after having spent a night in the company of one of Chivhu’s most expensive ladies. He decided to put aside his journey home, where he had intended to go and pay school fees for his six children who had all been sent home from school the previous week because of failure to pay school fees. On that particular day, he was on his way from Harare where he had been hired by one of his richest clients. He was therefore loaded with money.
Under the blinding influence of liquor, he had become so reckless that he started smashing bottles of beer onto the floor accusing them of either being “too fresh”, or being “flat” — or “not being cold enough.” He went on to boast that he was the richest man ever to enter Chivhu beer hall. He proved that immediately by displaying the fat ward of twenty-dollar notes that were tucked in his bulging purse. It’s needless to say that the man woke up the following morning completely centless.
The fat purse had disappeared without trace. Who was to blame for that? For views link up with [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> or sms only to 0772113207.
