Edwin Moyo in Gweru
Gweru-Traditional leaders have been implored to safeguard the health and wellbeing of young people to minimize early marriages and teenage pregnancies.
The call was made by National Aids Council Youth Coordinator (NAC), Beauty Nyamwanza during the “NOT IN MY VILLAGE” campaign workshop in Gweru recently.
The campaign which started in Mashonaland Central on 26 August 2024 was launched by President Mnangagwa with a goal of ending child marriages known as the Young People’s Network on Health and Wellbeing.
Speaking to The Midweek Watch in an interview, Nyamwanza said as NAC they were happy that such support programs were being conducted to educate both the youth and the leaders in combined efforts to safeguard the youths.
“So, as National AIDS Council, I think taking up from the Young Post Network on Health and Wellbeing, they started the campaign on Not in My Village campaign. And this is a campaign which is actually empowering chiefs with information on the challenges in their communities, especially teenage pregnancies and child marriages, so that they stop such practices in their areas of jurisdiction as the custodians of our culture.
“So if the chiefs say in their jurisdiction, they don’t want anyone who’d make a child pregnant or marry a child, I think the problem will be easily eradicated. We used to target all the other people, but we realized our results were not pleasing until we started roping in chiefs,” Nyamwanza said.
The National Facilitator for the Young People’s Network for Health and Wellbeing, Dumisani Ngwenya reiterated the importance of traditional leaders in making the campaign a success.
“Our goal and vision is to target young people so that they realize their potential especially in the economic development, we want to feed into the vision 2030 where we want to have young people who are well informed.
“Whenever children are impregnated or in child marriages, they end up dropping out of school but we want to harness demographic dividends as you know that we have over 33% of our population being young people between ages of 10-24 years so we want to harness from those demographics so that we have human development, economic growth and improve our health,” said Ngwenya.
However Chief Chinamora born Lista Chidziva from Mashonaland East said a lot of factors were leading to child marriages. He said issues such as poverty, drug and substance abuse, social media misuse, the breakdown of the traditional extended family structure as well as cultural erosion were a cause for concern.
“Other traditional leaders also agreed that they are the primary cause of child marriages with great emphasis on the misuse of social media as well as cultural erosion. The misuse of social media has caused a negative influence amongst the young population as it drives them to indulge in sexual activities before they reach the age of consent. Additionally, drug abuse was also revealed as another cause for children to indulge in sexual activities leading to child pregnancies.
“We have some areas where there are road networks that link Zimbabwe with the rest of the region, children have also not been spared from prostitution as they try to get money by selling their bodies to truckers. We therefore, appeal to the government to increase as well as enhance the payment of fees to underprivileged children, girls in particular as a measure of empowering them as well as giving them a better chance in life.” Chidziva said
Meanwhile, ZRP Midlands Provincial Spokesperson, Inspector Emmanuel Mahoko highlighted how the initiative will help with the strategies to curb child marriages and also encouraged the general public to safeguard and alert authorities on such crimes.
The event which saw different models and strategies being agreed upon at national level is also expected to be rolled out at provincial, district and ward level, including each and every village.
