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indicate that marriages are crashing with frightening rapidity, like houses built on sand, at the behest of vicious, social storms.
Judge President Justice George Chiweshe raised the alarm over the disintegration of what ought to be sanctions between a man and a woman when flagging off the 2013 Legal Year of the Bulawayo High Court recently. He disclosed that altogether 519 divorce summons were issued last year by the Bulawayo High Court and that the figure represented an increase of 113 cases over the 2011 figure.
Of course, the statistics related to Bulawayo as mentioned by the Judge President but should be taken as the tip of an iceberg of marriages foundering in the country as a whole and, therefore, as a reflection of moral decay in our society.
And, of course, the causes of the divorces are not difficult to find with Justice Chiweshe identifying urban migration triggered by industrialisation and urbanisation; adultery; domestic violence; economic hardships as well as other social ills.
One might suggest with equanimity that a breakdown of the extended family system that underpinned the marriage and family institutions in Zimbabwe since time immemorial, is responsible for the demise of the sanctity of marriage as ordained by God himself at creation.
When God created Eve and gave her to Adam as his wife, the two became one flesh as it were.
In this regard, the extended family system in its golden era served as a family support system that provided invaluable advice to young couples before marriage and counselling when their unions came under threat.
Post-modernity has witnessed a drift by young men and women away from their rural set-up and to the bright lights of the city to seek their fortunes there.
The reconstituted extended family system in the urban set up does not provide a safety net for the new urbanites against the erosion of their African values by decadent Western values germane to the city.
To be sure, the modified extended family system, comprises working parents who are concerned only, with their nuclear family and who spend time socialising with workmates with their own offspring left to their own devices.
As a result, young men and young women no longer receive guidance on the type of man or woman to marry whose background they should otherwise know through information provided by elders as was the case in the villages in the past. It is therefore not surprising the prevalence of marriages of convenience, or what one might call Facebook marriage to flaunt to peers elsewhere. The test of the pudding is in the mouth, seems to be what compels many young people to rush into marriage without discovering the moral chemistry of their partner, hence the spates of divorces that come when the couples discover they were not made for each other after all.
It is no longer “Till death do us part’, but rather “Till a small house does us part”. Or “Till financial challenges drive us apart”.
Justice Chiweshe cited adulterous lives banns to harmonious matrimony.
When the married ones wantonly engage in serial – womanising, thereby failing to lead by example, as is the case in Zimbabwe today, cannot young married men consort with small houses as a fashion, endangering their own marriages in the process?
Yes, they do and the result is divorce when their spouses discover what the men they passionately love do behind their backs.
A Harare family man who pays rent for a small house, complained the other day of suffering from high blood pressure . . . ah but these small houses!
The man was under tremendous pressure; the small house threatened to besiege the big house should he repeatedly default on her rentals.
He obviously knows that once his lawful wife knows of his infidelity and a child he fathered with the concubine, their marriage will be ruined.
Some of the domestic violence that has wreaked many marriages in the country are provoked by housewives, social scientists will confirm this from results of research whose results have been replicated elsewhere.
This is particularly the case where some women take their liberation and equality with men literally, making them believe as also meaning that because of their status in the home they should no longer submit to the authority of their husband as head of the family.
As one man of God said in Bulawayo the other day, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the women’s liberation. What lacks is educating the women that when the country elevates their status, it does not follow that the women should now believe they have the same authority as their husbands in family affairs.
Such an attitude creates confrontation and tensions that endanger marriages.
In many instances, men and women who enter marriage without proper knowledge of handling finances find themselves confronted with challenges at times such as these in Zimbabwe when the economy is in the doldrums and the scarcity of cash makes family lives difficult to manage, marriage often becomes the final victim.
Some might say the Church should weigh in heavily to save the marriages threatened with divorce in Zimbabwe on account of the numerous causative factors cited above.
True, marriage guidance on a wide outreach scale is important and imperative to save those marriages now teetering on the verge of collapse.
But, as the old saying goes, you can take a horse to the river but you cannot make it drink.
The will to learn is critical here.
However, as the man of God mentioned above noted that while education is critical to address the many challenges mentioned in this discourse, the main stumbling block was that the people concerned both young and old were not willing to learn.
For instance, the gullibility of young people made it difficult for them to be insular to decadent, Western practices, such as homosexuality, as purveyed by television.
Some of them begin to celebrate same sex marriages when they should know through public education and Bible teachings that homosexuality is ungodly.
Still Zimbabwe should spare no effort in protecting the family institution, especially when considering the fact that children – innocent souls – are subjected to traumatic lives once a marriage falls apart and parents go their separate ways, in most cases single parenting with meagre resources at hand becoming a nightmare.
Such a massive educational campaign will no doubt help scores of young people who today step headlong into marriage, blindfolded with infatuation which wears off when challenges pose a litmus test to their love and when they fail to pass the test with divorce becomes the out.
Online Reporter