Online Reporter
Stephen Mpofu, [email protected]
THE independence and freedom that we Zimbabweans — and others elsewhere in the global village — enjoy today began with political activities in urban areas, where organised resistance to oppressive colonial rule first took shape.
These urban struggles later escalated into armed liberation battles in rural areas, ultimately giving birth to the self-determination of native peoples.
Similarly, the empowerment of the girl child — her right to self-determination and personal autonomy — must begin in urban centres where communities are better organised, before being expanded into rural areas where some, if not many, parents continue to bind the girl child by the noose of various disempowering practices.
Which is why a recent call by a member of our Zimbabwean Parliament — that parents who, for instance, force into marriage daughters under the majority age of 18 years should be rusticated in jail for life — deserves serious reflection.
As Zimbabweans born and raised in rural areas, some of today’s MPs, among them, should know full well that the girl child out there in the sticks, where the majority of Zimbabweans still live, faces a range of repulsive impediments to her development, with enforced marriages among the most damaging.
Add to the above the cases in which, during times of poverty, some parents give away their daughters in a form of barter exchange to families that provided food relief.
Add to the above the cases in which members of certain religious sects give away daughters for marriage within their congregations, thereby perpetuating — as stated above in this discourse — the deprivation of the girl child’s right to self-determination.
Heroes and heroines — some of whom lost their lives in the armed struggle — will continue to be celebrated in post-modernity for bringing us the independence and freedom that we continue to enjoy today.
Similarly, let us have heroes and heroines who dedicate themselves to empowering the golden girl child in particular, ensuring that she determines her own future and, in doing so, shapes the progressive destiny of our country.
