At least 82 school girls in Kwekwe district have dropped out of school after they either married or fell pregnant since the beginning of the year.
By Phyllis Mbanje
According to Kwekwe district education officer Irene Mapenzauswa, 82 girls have quit school while 230 dropouts were recorded last year.
Speaking during a prize-giving ceremony at Shungu High school in Kwekwe, Mapenzauswa said girls were being lured from school by men who took advantage of the current economic situation to shower them with money and gifts.
Kwekwe is surrounded by numerous mining compounds, which harbour illegal panners who have a penchant for spoiling young girls with money in exchange for sexual favours.
Primary and Secondary Education minister Lazarus Dokora referred Southern Eye to the ministry’s public relations office when asked to comment on the situation in Kwekwe.
“Talking to me is irrelevant, get in touch with the public relations person and we will see if it warrants a response,” he said.
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However, the public relations officer Patrick Zumbo said he was in Matabeleland South and referred Southern Eye back to Dokora.
He later requested that the questions be put in writing after learning that the instruction had come from the minister.
By end of day there was still no response from either Zumbo or Dokora.
Zimbabwe is among 12 countries with inconsistent laws that limit child marriages cited in a recent study.
A recent study by scholars from McGill University, which was published in the International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health said analysed data from 12 sub-Saharan African countries indicated that in countries with consistent laws against child marriage – which set 18 years as the minimum legal age for both marriage and sexual consent, with no exception for parental permission – child marriage was 40% lower than in countries with inconsistent laws.
Four countries in the study had consistent laws against child marriage – Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda – and eight countries had inconsistent laws: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gabon, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
The study highlighted some of the challenges to curbing child marriage in places where minimum-age laws related to marital and sexual consent contradict each other.
“Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have legal exceptions or customary or religious laws that contradict national statutes or international human rights agreements,” the researchers noted.
“Child marriage has been practiced for generations and is still seen as a culturally legitimate way of protecting girls from premarital sex and any potentially dishonorable consequences.”
