Teenage mom’s death simply unacceptable
THE loss of the teenage girl, who died last week two weeks after giving birth to twins at Sally Mugabe Central Hospital, is very difficult to accept.
It comes at a time when the Government, in partnership with various stakeholders, has taken the fight against child rape to another level.
The sexual abuse, which started as an incestuous affair, should be investigated to establish all the circumstances which led to this tragedy.
According to the laws of the land, the age of consent has been raised from 16 to 18.
Those who are found guilty of violating this law could face up to 10 years in jail.
In this case, the 22-year-old appears to have committed a crime by taking the late girl as his wife in a union which produced the twins.
The fact that the two families have been trying to conceal the matter shows that they understood the unlawful nature of the relationship.
They knew Tatenda Zhanje, who stayed with the teenage girl as his wife, was breaking the law.
There was an attempt by the family to try and ensure that the world would not know that a crime was being committed in their backyard and this should be criticised.
We can’t afford to let sex predators remain on the loose when we know that we can all play a part in ending the abuse of these young girls.
On Tuesday night, as we reported in yesterday’s edition of this newspaper, Tatenda was arrested and questioned by the police at Highlands Police Station.
He had been in hiding since the death of his teenage wife.
He only turned himself up after it dawned on him that the police investigations had one to another level.
The police intercepted a lorry, which was carrying the coffin of Yeukai Dandara for burial in Murewa.
Earlier in the day, police had also arrived at the Sally Mugabe Hospital, as part of their investigations into the case, only to be told that the family had already collected Yeukai’s body and were on their way to Murewa for burial.
Everything became complicated when reports emerged that some key documents had been altered to try and deceive the police and the public that Yeukai was not under age and should never have been allowed to be in that relationship.
There were shameless and desperate attempts to try and change the age of Yeukai to 18 when relatives claim she was only 14.
On Tuesday night, Tatenda told the police that Yeukai was 16, which suggests she was 15, when she became pregnant.
However, it became difficult to accept Tatenda’s testimony as he also kept changing his true age as he first claimed he was 20.
Then, he changed and said he was 22 and, when asked to produce his identity card, he claimed he had lost it on his way to the police station.
There are so many questions that need to be answered and the police should get to the bottom of this case.