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Tendai Gukutikwa
Weekender Reporter
A marriage between two teenagers has fallen apart following the boy’s incessant bashing of his wife using a cooking stick over her “late” dinner preparations, The Weekender has learnt.
Givemore Sithole and Tanaka Ngarivhume (both 18) got married four years ago, with their parents blessing the union.
In her submissions before acting Chief Saurombe’s court recently, Tanaka said she has been turned into a punching bag by Givemore who always complain that she serves dinner late.
“I have never enjoyed this marriage. It was a total waste of time as I gained nothing from it except a child and scars from the daily beatings. He uses a cooking stick to beat me.
“I want to be out of this marriage for good. Givemore assaults me on a daily basis saying he wants his dinner early. At times he complains that I serve him cold meals, yet he would have come back home late.
“For four years, I have suffered a lot of abuse at his hands. His father never intervenes, yet we stay together.
“I just want out and I have since gone back to my father’s home. Givemore, however, continues pestering me to return to him,” she said.
She even tried to give Givemore a divorce token during the court session, but he refused to accept it.
Givemore insisted that he still loves his wife and want her and their child back home.
He told the court that he erred by assaulting his wife and promised to do everything possible to pay for his sins.
“I am really sorry for what I did, but I want my family back home. I am not accepting her divorce token because I still love her. She is the only woman in my life,” he said.
However, it emerged that Tanaka’s father, Clever Ngarivhune, was the one who had approached the court in a bid to force Givemore to pay his daughter’s lobola so that he could surrender her back to him against her wish.
Clever told the court that he was willing to surrender his daughter back to the Sitholes once they pay her lobola.
“All I want is my lobola so that I can give them back their wife and child. I will only do so after I receive my dues,” he said.
Acting Chief Saurombe said he does not condone child marriages.
He said if he had known about the marriage when the two were still minors, he would have had their parents arrested.
“I will never tolerate people who marry off minors in my area. Your daughter now knows about the dangers of early marriages and now wants to go back to school, yet you are insisting that she should go back to this man.
“If every father was like you, then all minors would become child brides. Shame on you. The fathers of these two deserve to be behind bars because they embraced this sham of a marriage,” he said.
Acting Chief Saurombe said no lobola should be paid for Tanaka as that will sanitise the child marriage crime.
Instead, he ordered Givemore and his father Lovemore Sithole to pay US$750 as damages to the Ngarivhume family.
According to a recently published Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZIMSTAT) 2022 Population and Housing Census Preliminary Report, 16.2 percent of women aged 20 to 24 years were married-off before attaining the age of 18.
“The proportion was higher, at 22.7 percent in rural areas as compared to 7.2 percent in urban areas,” reads the report.
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