adminThe world is fast losing the battle against the marriage institution by glorifying everything that is the complete opposite of the esteemed institution. Perversion now pervades our nation and our moral fibre reeks of unimaginable abomination ranging from homosexuality, teenage sex, that vice often glorified by the film industry and launched into the whole wide vulnerable world through the commercial tentacles of globalisation such as satellite television and the Internet, and fornication that is sanitised through use of such terms as co-habiting and the latest monster, violence, that together with alcohol abuse have claimed many a marriage and continue to wreak havoc.
This shall not pretend to be a moral lecture since statistics will get even the doubting Thomases thinking again over the fearsome creature that we have corrupted the marriage institution into.
Chronicle at the weekend carried an article in which a 28-year-old married man from Vumbachikwe Mine in Gwanda allegedly teamed up with his girlfriend and assaulted his wife leading to her death. It is quite unfortunate that due to the limitations placed on us by the constraints of language we cannot find a better term to describe the aggressor since the term “man” should definitely denote something better, maybe the word “male” would be quite close and be an almost apt description. Biology creates males but society creates men.
Being a product of socialisation it is quite fitting for us to stand back and question what is going wrong in our society so that we get back to the basics(respect for vows) since the longer we take to prepare our children for adulthood the greater the toll on our marriages and the lives of our daughters.
Police report that cases of violence in homes, referred to as domestic violence — though the domestic arena cannot contain it — are on the rise with at least seven people killed by their partners in separate incidents in 149 cases of domestic violence recorded countrywide in a week a fortnight ago. Of the 149 cases recorded, 143 were allegedly committed by men with women responsible for a mere six.
A national, holistic approach is needed to combat the scourge since the killings have been widespread and the distribution so far shows deaths were recorded in Bulawayo, Zhombe, Siabuwa, Murehwa, Seke, Mutoko and Bindura. Mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers, church leaders and traditional leaders have a huge burden on their shoulders since these monsters that are decimating our women are bred by us and hence as a nation we should take responsibility and seek ways of arresting the situation and bring back the joy and the attractiveness originally intended for the institution of marriage.
If marriage were a commercial product, how would even the most skilful marketing guru begin to even attempt selling it against the background of such statistics and the glamour attached to the fornicators on the other side of the fence that the media presents as free, independent and successful?
It is in this age that someone who started having sex at the age of 14 and had a leaked sex-tape, a 72-day so-called marriage is considered a star and thus a role model! It is no wonder that even the British mothers are worried with one lady school principal saying glorifying such unacceptable behaviour was sending the wrong signals to our children. But our children are caught in between a rock and a hard place.
We need more role models in terms of family matters, fathers and mothers who are made of sterner stuff, who know that it is principle that ultimately gets one over this bridge that life is.
If we fail to arrest the precipitous descent that we are witnessing then we should not blame our sons, and daughters especially, for fearing to commit to the institution of marriage since statistics push it closer to a death sentence. At current death statistics it means we are losing about 364 spouses in a year or at least one partner, usually a woman, against an uninsurable risk called marriage, whether registered or not. We learn, also from statistics, that 30 percent of women have experienced some physical violence at some point since the age of 15.
While the law will continue to condemn the killers to jails and the gallows, the majority of the abusers still roam free and continue to scar their partners and children’s esteem, and blight in some instances a whole generation’s dreams.
Let us therefore gird our loins, take up our physical as well as spiritual weapons and take aim at this monster that is devouring the very institution that ensures the perpetuation of mankind. We are under threat, hence it cannot be business as usual.
Londile Moyo
Bongani Ndlovu