She was a brave little girl, who believed in her right to choose how to live her life. Aged 12, as a minor she remained nameless in the news.
She lived in Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands, the green, misty mountains along the Mozambican border. On weekends, people dressed in flowing white robes, the men bearded, [...]]]>
In Bissau - too young to carry the burden of marriage. Photo: M.Sayagues
She was a brave little girl, who believed in her right to choose how to live her life. Aged 12, as a minor she remained nameless in the news.
She lived in Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands, the green, misty mountains along the Mozambican border. On weekends, people dressed in flowing white robes, the men bearded, holding carved wooden canes, gather under the masasa trees. They belong to the Johanne Marange apostolic sect. Peaceful people – with a nasty habit of marrying young girls.
The girl was given as second wife to her older sister’s husband, a pastor in his fifties. She escaped to her uncle’s home but he brought her back. She got a beating, and escaped again. She sought the school teacher and he brought her back. She got another hiding, and escaped again. She went to the police, and they brought her back. Then she hanged herself.
That was in 2001. Her death was just a news blip among violent farm invasions.
Although against the law, child weddings continue in Zimbabwe, and likely on the rise due to poverty, says a new study by Women and Law in Southern Africa. Adults and social institutions still fail to protect girls.
Parents: criminals or ignorant?
Years later I did a story on child marriage in Gabu, in eastern Guinea Bissau. Interviewing parents and chiefs, I heard that misery, coupled with fear of AIDS and out of wedlock pregnancy, drove the practice.
The parents I talked to were ignorant and poor, not evil. They did not know any better. They lived in a failed state that fails to deliver basic services. Just to finish primary school in rural Bissau is a victory.
In April, a Mauritanian mother living near Cadiz, Spain, was sentenced to 17 years in prison for marrying her daughter, then aged 13, to a distant cousin, and forcing her to have sex with him.
The wedding took place in Mauritania in 2005 and the sex in Spain in 2007 when the husband visited his teen wife, who continued living with her parents. He got a 13-year jail sentence, and her illiterate father, 18 months.
The girl’s two younger siblings returned to Mauritania, where protests have unfurled.
Child marriage should be eradicated like smallpox – but is this harsh, family-splitting prison sentence the best solution?
A short stay in prison and extended community service at a Muslim NGO that promotes gender equality would emphasize education over repression.
From another perspective: what mechanisms does Spain have to teach its family laws to its immigrant cheap labour? Driving a car without a licence is not allowed. Work permits could be tied to a quick test: knowing Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, prison sentences for genital cutting and child marriage, and local laws that protect the rights of little girls.
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Their pre-nuptial agreement stipulates that he will spend five days a month with her in her village and the rest with his first wife, who will get 80 per cent of his modest salary.
 The newly weds: a polemic union. Photo:Mukhtar Mai Women’s Welfare Organisation |
Nice sisterhood touch – weird nonetheless. Mai says she married because he was threatening to commit suicide if she didn’t. Her marrying a polygamist dismayed women activists in Pakistan. To me, the mind-boggling issue is the union to an obsessed man. In many countries, that threat would earn him a restraining order and psychotherapy. Here, it earns him a wife.
The heroine who refused to be a victim of her rapists submits to emotional blackmail. Her lawyer says Mai sought an alliance with a man of a powerful tribe, because the trial of her rapists is floundering. On the plus side, that a raped woman finds a husband who cherishes her is groundbreaking in Pakistan.
The truth will emerge sooner rather later, the reasons why this courageous activist, who runs her own NGO and had the support of the women’s movement in Pakistan, who starred in a documentary, wrote a memoir published in English and French, was Glamour magazine’s Woman of the Year and spoke at the United Nations, chose this marriage.
He is clearly smitten with her. She does not mention loving him, only family (his and hers) pressure. I’d like to ask her: do you love him, or think you may grow to love him, or is love for your husband a consideration at all? Maybe not. Romantic love is a social and cultural construct. Arranged marriages can grow strong, respectful and loving bonds among spouses. We wish the newly weds well.
Time will tell if five days a month is enough, too little – or too much.
This curious episode highlights how, for many women across the world, marriage is the only way she can feel safe, respected, provided with a roof over her head. The ways of the heart are mysterious and manifold; so are gender relations.
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