Family unit must be preserved

come under danger from increasing divorce rates spawned by weakening of African cultural practices and the misguided adoption of some individualistic Western practices.
It is disheartening that in the build-up to the International Day of the Family, some media houses and women rights activists chose to frenetically chastise Vice President Joice Mujuru for advising women to be the rock that supports their families.
Being the African mother she is and exuding with her unparalleled family and career experience, Mai Mujuru found it mandatory to impart well intended advice to young women to remain resolutely committed to safeguarding their families in the face of unrelenting challenges that threaten to put the family unit asunder.
Mai Mujuru did not mince her words and reminded other women that like everywhere else in life, marriage has its own turbulences, which if not dealt with carefully will definitely lead to the collapse of the family unit.
Out of this realisation, she advised women to be the glue that bonds the family together, and the peacemakers who throw away family spears and other fighting paraphernalia to extinguish generational family feuds and entrench peace in their homes.
From an African perspective, there was completely nothing amiss with her advice.
She was simply assuming her social role as an elder person to dutifully provide practical guidance to young women on how to protect their families.
However, her advice inadvertently elicited a volley of unprecedented attacks from a cabal of women rights activists who deliberately mistook her nourishing lecture as a direct threat to the development of women’s rights.
The so-called women rights activists and some media practitioners ganged up against the Vice President and fouled her well-intended advice, saying she was advocating for women to be submissive to abusive husbands.
Even controversial and fugitive fraudsters like Betty Makoni jumped into the fray and condemned Mai Mujuru for purportedly reversing women rights achievements by decades.
It is quite unfortunate that these donor-funded and family averse individuals and organisations remain blind to genuine women rights abuses being perpetrated by people like Morgan Tsvangirai, who continues to sexually abuse women with impunity.
Tsvangirai is an undisputable womaniser who blatantly had unprotected sexual encounters with a plethora of unsuspecting women thus exposing them to the dangers of HIV and AIDS and other marauding sexual maladies.
He is so daring that many times he wantonly juggled with women’s lives, paying lobola today and divorcing tomorrow while maintaining concomitant sexual partnerships with others.
In the process, he had managed to impregnate a few others leaving them to look after the offspring while the bullish premier moves on to seek new pastures.
Surprisingly, not even a whimper escaped the throats of the so-called women rights activists towards such debasing behaviour to women.
It is clear that their activism is conspicuously muddied by their parochial political leanings which impel them to vociferously take aim at any false hints of women rights abuse by Zanu-PF functionaries while turning a blind eye to brazen abuses by functionaries in MDC-T.
It is under such a political briefing that people like MDC-T Senator Morgan Femai could miraculously escape the unsparing wrath of these women rights activists even after he had severely adulterated the dignity of womanhood by seeking to sexualise everything about our mothers and sisters.
How the women rights activists could remain mute and unperturbed by Femai’s sexist remarks towards women is a wonder.
While we acknowledge that some women rights activists have positively contributed towards the advancement of the rights of women and the girl child, their works should not be tainted by political activism or unrestrained Westernisation.
They should not forget that we live in an African society which values the family unit as a collective institution pivotal to our livelihood.
Individualism has no place in our societies and thus celebrating the crumbling of the family in the name of liberating women is too extreme and misplaced.
The individual rights of women are sacrosanct and must be respected but efforts to promote them should cautiously be balanced with the urgent need to safeguard the endangered family unit.
On this understanding, there was nothing outrageous therefore for Amai Mujuru to urge her fellow womenfolk to be the vanguard of the family unit.
African mothers are not selfish but big-hearted mothers who sometimes put family before self like our dear Vice President.
By emphasising the collective, Mai Mujuru was also overtly condemning selfish and promiscuous practices by men which have inexorably contributed to the fracture of the family unit.
Both men and women should protect the family unit for the sake of our children.