adminThe Sunday Mail, October 9, 1988
THE Ministry of Community and Co-operative Development and Women’s Affairs and the Child Protection Society last week, denounced as “morally illegal” the continuing practice of giving away young girls’ (legal minors), as part compensation to families whose relatives have been killed.
Their reaction follows last weekend’s disclosure in The Sunday Mail that yet another six-year old girl was given away as part payment to a family in Makoni District in July this year.
The incident for which she has been used as a commodity of exchange happened in 1978, and the young girl has already left her family and is now living with the family to which she has been given away as compensation.
Two months ago, The Sunday Mail highlighted the plight of another six-year-old girl, this time from Murehwa, who was given away after her father had allegedly speared a man who subsequently died in a Harare hospital, as a result of the spear wounds.
The timely intervention of the police and the Child Protection Society saved the Murehwa girl, who has now been removed from Murehwa to Harare, where she will remain in the care of the Child Protection Society until she is aged 18.
Both the Ministry of Community and Co-operative Development and Women’s Affairs and the Child Protection Society expressed fear that such abuses and dehumanising practices were widespread despite the national ire at this customary aberration.
Said Child Protection Society chairman Willie Musarurwa: “We are morally committed. There is no way we can stop rescuing such young girls. We want this thing exterminated and we expect the media to co-operate in publicising this condemnation so that everybody knows that it is illegal, in the sense that it is not morally acceptable by the majority of the people here.
Asked for how long the society could keep on accepting such children, Cde Musarurwa said they simply could not just close their conscience to such abuses. There was no limit as to how many young girls would be taken in by the society.
LESSONS FOR TODAY
• All violations of children’s rights can legitimately be described as harmful practices.
• Harmful practices based on tradition, culture, religion or superstition are often perpetrated against very young children or infants, who clearly lack the capacity to consent or to refuse themselves.
• Assumption of parental powers or rights over children allows the perpetration of a wide range of these malpractices and abuses by parents and some by other individuals with parents’ assumed or actual consent.
• Across regions, millions of children are subjected to various forms of harmful practices.
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