So much to think of

But no, it was just the beginning of crazier things because just as the week began, we woke up to yet another shocking headline. This time a respected 45-year-old so-called business leader was involved. A 45-year-old former David Whitehead Textiles chief executive Edwin Chimanye was found guilty of dating a 12-year-old girl whom he showered with gifts and cash, treated with braais and fast foods, among other shocking things.
The man even went as far as buying the girl a mobile phone so he could communicate easily with her. The communication between the two got to a point where Chimanye asked the little girl to send him nude pictures of herself and she obliged. People, how does a 45-year-old lust after a 12-year-old? Those of us who are mothers; in fact all women know that at 12 a girl is just budding into teenagehood. Yes, there are several changes that take place on her body during that time such as around the chest and probably the onset of her menstrual cycle if she happens to be early but the bottom line is, she will still be a child.
At 12, while a girl can effectively bath on her own, there are some who are not even able to bath themselves adequately. At 12, while a girl can be trusted to choose her own clothes, her mother or another adult still picks out clothes for her for special and important occasions such as church or parties.
At 12, a girl is just that, a child.
How a grown man of 45 could have mistaken a 12-year-old for an adult is beyond me. They tried to argue that the girl lied she was 16 but please does 16 make better sense for a grown man to have an affair with? In a country that is literally teeming with grown up women who can make up their minds about relations with those of the opposite sex, the man in question had to settle on a 12-year-old and actually go out to places of leisure with her. As I write I try to think of the kind of conversations that you normally get from 12-year olds and others around that age.
These children always chatter endlessly and they are hyper active. As a mother and aunt, I have seen my fair share of young people that age and I do not understand what a grown man could have wanted from a little girl of that age.
Anyway, we are truly grateful the man in question got caught and I bet that is the only thing he is sorry about. If he were not caught, he probably would have gone on to one day force this child into a sexual relationship and there we would have had worse problems. Those paedophiles we read about in western countries have been unleashed upon us right here in my fatherland. Those things we thought were only for horror movies are happening right here in our streets.
The man met this girl as she walked the streets in Avondale, something that a lot of children are bound to do in their neighbourhoods. But for the child to have also accepted his business card and accepted to go out with him and to send her pictures to him reveals a problem. There is something wrong in our society.
I was trying to think of a child bringing into the home a mobile phone and parents or guardians not picking it up. I was thinking of children as young as 12 going for braais and the adults in the home not noticing it. An incident is cited where this man went out with the young girl and her friends around 7pm. Who lets out a 12 year old around that time? We know in Shona they say, mugoni wepwere ndeasinaye, which means one should not be too harsh with others’ children unless they do not have their own.
The saying comes out of the acknowledgement that children are not easy to raise and that is a fact. While every parent would want their child to grow up to be a doctor, lawyer or something along those lines, truth is some children turn out to be robbers, murderers and sex workers. But surely parents everywhere have the responsibility to protect their children?
When we do not pay attention to what is happening with our children, bad things can happen. In these evil days we are living in, it seems it is no longer safe to even send a child to a tuck shop that is a couple of meters away. It is not fine to let child commute alone from school to a home that is on the other side of town.
It is not fine to let a child keep things that you have no idea of their origins. It is not fine to see children with money whose origins you have no idea of and let it go. It is not fine to raise our children without having crucial conversations about money and material possessions with them for they will be easily swayed if such conversations do not take place. We have to tell our children we love them and provide the essentials they require so that they do not go after the first person that shows them what seems to be love. Someone said this to me in light of this incident and they got me thinking: “just how many parents tell their children they love them?”
How many bother to find out what is happening in their children’s lives and make an effort to know their children’s friends? Some send children on sleepovers at homes they have never been to. In these times we are living in, these are things we may need to rethink surely? While the man in this case got a custodial sentence, many among us feel that he got of lightly. Only 18 months for destroying a child’s life? The innocence that the child should have possessed at 12 has since gone with the fondling and conversations that this man held with the minor involved. He should have been left to rot in jail. At this time when rape and murder of girls and women is becoming almost daily fodder, there was real need to make an example of this man.
At this time when the nation aches for the late Tsitsi Stacey Munjoma, whose life was brutally cut short at 11, this man should have paid.
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