Letters to the Editor 12 years . . . these paedophiles?
years) is improving (getting lower). The MICS 2014 data show that one in three women married before age 18, and also depict huge differences between urban (18 percent) and rural (43 percent) areas.”
Section 22(1) of the Marriage Act states that no girl under the age of 16 years and no boy under the age of 18 years shall contract a valid marriage without the consent of the Minister.
This was challenged by Loveness Mudzuru and Ruvimbo Tsopodzi who complained that the provision violated the Constitution by setting the age of marriage for girls below the age permitted by the Constitution which is 18 years.
The Africa Legal Information Institute said the applicants, young women of 18 and 19 years of age, applied to the Constitutional Court for a declaratory order that the effect of s 78(1), as read with s 81(1), of the Constitution of Zimbabwe 2013 is to set 18 as the minimum age for marriage; that no person under that age may enter a marriage union; and that the Customary Marriages Act [Chapter 5:07] is unconstitutional, in that it does not provide for a minimum age limit of 18 years.
The Constitutional Court granted the order but to date, the Marriages Act is yet to be amended to reflect that. With such contradictions in the law, shouldn’t parliamentarians be seized with harmonising and synchorinising such?
Outraged by suggestions that the Committee’s members were pushing for the reduction of the 16 years set during the 8th Parliament and hailed as a milestone in the fight against child marriages, angry citizens took to social media platforms Twitter and Facebook to vent their anger, calling them paedophiles for harbouring such thoughts. @Chris_Muyeye wrote: “There must be perverts in this committee. I am disgusted. Is this how we are using tax payers’ funds to come up with such warped policies?” @Gracia Gwati voiced her concern: “You mean grown up men & women spent taxpayers money for lunch & all to propose such bilious nonsense. Aewa, they need to be secluded from society, they exhibit criminal behaviour.”
@Taasha wrote: As a young lady who is proudly Zimbabwean, I am greatly disappointed and disheartened by this matter. This is going to cause a lot of problems for us. I am thinking of a 12-yearold getting raped. When she/he is taken to court and his/her rapist’s hides behind, “he/she said yes.”
Human rights activist Ms Everjoice Win could not hide her disgust:
“My question is: So all these years of advocacy against child marriage have led us here? What did I miss? Help me understand. So they have been seemingly condemning child marriage, only for them to end up at ‘ok we will just f*** the little kids but not marry them?”
The committee’s chairperson Dr Ruth Labode confirmed that the issue of the reduction of the age of consent from 16 to 12 had come out in deliberations following presentations by the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare on amendments made to the Public Health Act. She said she was more concerned about young persons’ access to reproductive health services than anything else.
She added it had come to her committee’s attention that the seeming contradictions between the age of sexual consent set at 16 and the legal majority age of 18 presented challenges in the administration of the amended Public Health Act.
“For example, we know that young persons under the age of 16 are having sex and may get a sexually transmitted infection. This will force them to go to the clinic or hospital to seek treatment. Provision of the amended Public Health Act will not allow a minor to be treated without the consent of the parent or guardian. Will that child get their parent to accompany them to the hospital? Is that practical? Do we have a clause in the amended Act to allow for their treatment?” queried Dr Labode.
After all the lobbying and campaigns done as the nation fights rampant child marriages, the question that Zimbabwe should be pre-occupied with is how to synchronise.
Former Harare West legislator Ms Jessie Majome accused society of exposing children under the age of 18 to explicit sexual content only to turn back and accuse the same children of being delinquent.
“We have children getting sexual exposure through popular culture and the media. We accuse the young girls of engaging in sexual activity. But we are not doing anything about this exposure. Who is making these school girls pregnant? In most cases, it’s the adult men.
“Why not address that? The constitution wants to serve the best interests of the child. Is lowering the age of consent in the best interest of the children?” said Ms Majome.
In Kenya the age of consent is 18 years. Shouldn’t we be looking at increasing our 16 to match the 18 years legal age of majority, instead of taking these five steps back by lowering 16 years?
South Africa is in a similar predicament with Zimbabwe.
In that country, a person is considered to be a child, when he or she is under the age of 18, however the Sexual Offences Act does allow consensual sex for persons 16 and older. This creates a problem where the parents of a child between 16 and 18 do not consent to their child having sex.