The Sunday News
Robin Muchetu, Senior Reporter
LEGISLATORS have called on the Government and lobby groups to scrap the term child marriages and replace it with the term rape as that is “what it should be aptly called.”
Child marriage is defined as marriage of a girl before she reaches the age of 15 in Zimbabwe. Chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio on Education Mrs Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga, said it was disheartening that child rape was being sanitised under the term child marriages.
Her sentiments come following the death of Anna Machaya, a 14-year-old child who was married to a Johanne Marange Apostolic Sect member who has since been arrested and charged with murder. In an interview, Mrs Misihairabwi-Mushonga said there was seemingly a lack of value of the girl child.
“I have been a feminist and women activist for two decades and I think what bothers me is, our inability not only as Government but as a society, we don’t seem to value our children in particular the girl child. We all need to have our awakening of our conscience and ask ourselves why as a people and as a nation we do not value our girls,” said Mrs Misihairabwi-Mushonga.
She bemoaned the non-deterrent jail sentences being handed down to perpetrators of sexually related crimes and the concealment of the matters.
“We arrest people and give them 20 years for stealing a cow and we still have in this country, situations where somebody has sexually abused a child and they get community service. We still have, in the country, circumstances where a neighbour or people in a community who know that next door or in the next village a 12-year-old, a 13-year-old has been given away and we do absolutely nothing about it.”
She said the case of Anna Machaya and the union she was in must not be sanitised as a marriage.
“We have not, as a nation, started putting up a list of paedophiles. I am actually very against the way we describe these things and call them marriages; they are not. You can’t call sexual abuse; you cannot call a crime of a paedophilia and give it a descent name like a marriage. How do we even call them early marriages, they are not, they are just criminal acts, criminal offences that should not be given the decency of being called an early marriage.
“I actually feel violated by the term early marriage, when people say let’s deal with early marriages, lets deal with paedophiles, criminal that violate our children and it needs to bring anger in every one of us because we are the protectors of these children, they cannot protect themselves,” she added.
She went on;
“I am more upset with the Judiciary, the High Court as you know our Constitution; the High Court is the upper guardian of our children so where society is failing to protect our children, the High Court is given power and a mandate to be the protectors of our children. If our High Court is not coming through in this instance to claim and to affect what they really should be affecting as an upper guardian then I am disappointed in the Judiciary in terms of what they are doing.”
Mrs Misihairabwi-Mushonga said the Marange case is just one example of violations against children in the country.
“Yes, now we know she is Anna and not Memory. It is just that the Anna case was thrown to us by social media. This case is coming out of Marange and we know that these people have always had a cultural issue around it. We need to go out there and we need to be talking and engaging with them, educating and arresting.
“I don’t think we are seeing enough of that. It is wrong for us all to point fingers at the Government but also be pointing fingers at ourselves to say as an individual, what have I done to protect those that cannot protect themselves. So, it should be a question about our entire society and how we are accepting this,” she added.
Zimbabwe currently has no registration of sex offenders.
“When you go to some countries in Europe, I’m not saying there are no violations, they are there, this is why we have got the term paedophilia, it is not an ethnic term. It is recognised by some people in western countries that there are people who are violators.
The thing that I admire about those societies is that if you have a case of sexual abuse towards a child or woman, you are listed, you are known, for some of them they also put trackers on you to find out where you are going, you cannot be near a school, a crèche, near anywhere where children are. But we have people in this country who, like I said, are given community service or nothing happens to them so they are allowed to go back and violate further,” she added.
The legislator further said a strong message must be sent in regards to child sexual abuse.
“So, we have not sent a strong enough political message that says we love our children and we want to protect them. We care and that paedophilia situations are unacceptable. I hope that Africa changes the term early marriages because it sanitises a criminal act, a criminal offence,” she added.
