Premature marriage: “This one here, that’s your husband – did you hear me?” – OP-ED

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Premature marriage: “This one here, that’s your husband – did you hear me?” – OP-ED

3:25 CAT | 26 May 2021

Image: Rádio Encontro Nampula

In different ways, families, friends, government, NGOs and other entities frequently complain about premature marriage. The voices of those who argue that it is a recent development originated by female initiation rites are on the rise. That’s right: it is assumed that girls are taught, at a young age, the lessons that should be administered to older people.

On the other hand, there are those who argue that premature marriages are the result of soap operas [telenovelas] and/or disobedience by today’s young people.

But history tells that Africans have married at a young age for a long time. Ask the father, the mother, the grandfather or oldest aunt how old they were [when they married]. They were teenagers when given in marriage, but luckily their commitment was one taken seriously by both families.

There were even at that time situations of men who married an unborn child. They said, if a woman is born of this belly, she will be my wife. Upon consummation of their omen, they began to invest in the child until their eventual marriage, even with a large age-gap. At that time, it was not yet a problem. So was it right? No. But it was customary practice.

It started to be a problem when people became aware of their rights. This [premature marriage] violated the rights of the child. Well, it was common to find a grandpa married to a teenager. The victims were always women, as they are today.

Unfortunately, there are still today people who encourage ancient practices and force girls without strong enough bones to marry. They say that their daughter must marry before they [the parents] die, so that they may eat salt, and get clothes or food from the son-in-law, and so on.

Premature unions, in my view, result from ignorance. Not only of the illiterate without a pen, but also of the illiterate who have studied a lot but still live like savages. They also result from the appetite of sexually disoriented men; they result from rigid adherence to the old customs combined with the absolute poverty that people today are still enduring.

Amina Mulyiwa fled her parents’ home in Mutuali when she was forced to go live with a male nurse who was supposed to be the solution to the family’s poverty. At the age of 14 and in Grade 5, Amina preferred to walk on foot from Mutuali to the city of Nampula in order not to be a victim of premature marriage. It took her about five days to get there, following the road blindly without directions, but carrying the hope of freeing herself from the clutches of her would-be seducer.

Unlike this case, there are many Aminas who cannot escape, and are forced to take men their grandparents’ age as husbands. Let all of us advocate for children’s rights! Who will defend them if their own parents sell them? I say no more!

Source: Rádio Encontro Nampula