VIOLA Sumbe (35) was once married off by her parents to an older man at the age of 15 and ended up as wife number nine.
BY HAZVINEI MWANAKA
Although the decision temporarily solved her family’s hunger problems, it left her dealing with the lifetime repercussions after she contracted HIV from her husband.
“We didn’t have anything to put on our table,” Viola recalled.
“That was when my father decided to marry me off to a well-known businessman in the village to ease the suffering that we were enduring at home.”
She said her marriage was nothing unusual, as it was the norm in the village, as several girls her age had already been married.
The passage of time, however, revealed that it was a fatal decision, when it emerged that her polygamist husband was HIV positive and was not taking any precautions to protect his wives from contracting the virus.
“At 15, I was not aware of HIV or sexually transmitted infections (STI) and negotiating for safer sex was still a dream. I later contracted an STI and that was when I also realised that I was HIV positive,” Viola said.
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Following the death of her husband, she returned to her family home and was employed as a house help by a nurse, who eventually assisted her to go back to school.
“Not long after, the man I was married to, died and I returned back home, something I saw as a blessing. I started working at a nurse’s house and she later helped me to go back to school,” Viola recalled.
“If it was not for that nurse, I could not be a teacher by now. Being married at a tender age is very harmful. A lot of things happen that you are not aware of.”
She said with the increasing support from the government and other development partners, hopefully Zimbabwe will be able to achieve the fight against child marriages.
According to a UNAIDS report, “adolescents who start having sex early are more likely to have sex with high-risk partners or multiple partners, and are less likely to use condoms”.
“Delaying the age at which young people first have sex can significantly protect them from infection. Lacking the necessary knowledge and skills, younger adolescents are less likely to protect themselves from HIV than young people in their early 20s”.
Zimbabwe National Council for the Welfare of Children national director, Taylor Nyanhete, told NewsDay Weekender that early marriages and sexual activity increased health risks in young girls.
“Young girls do not have the skills to negotiate for safer sex, as many are coerced. They are also not fully developed to conceive, thereby, increasing their risk in pregnancy,” he said.
Nyanhete said violence was also common in relationships with young girls, as they were not capacitated to negotiate for safe sex.
He called on the government to do more in the area of sexual and reproductive health, as a way of assisting young girls, who are at the risk of being married off in childhood.
“Government should increase funding to sexual and reproductive health programmes and education. It should also ensure that girls remain in school until they are eighteen,” Nyanhete said.
Around 39% of girls in Africa are married before the age of 18 and 13% are married by the time they reach 15 years of age according to Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe.
In Zimbabwe, Mashonaland West province has recorded the highest number of child marriages in the country at 42% of the national total.
