CHILD MARRIAGES IN NYAMUZUWE COMMUNITY, ZIMBABWE: PARENTS AND GUARDIANS CONNIVING

Resum

Despite strides that have been made in Zimbabwe in uplifting the standard of women and improving their welfare, there still exist dissonances in the level of life in many Zimbabwean women. The poor living standards experienced by women in rural areas are a cause for concern. The level of education, rights deprivation and child marriages are rampant particularly in Nyamuzuwe community in Mutoko District have risen to alarming levels. Of concern in this article is the issue of child marriages that has seen several girls dropping out of school as a result of marriages. What is very disturbing is that parents or guardians of these girls seem to be conniving with perpetrators in the whole process of child marriages. At the end of the day, all the gains Zimbabwe is boasting of in terms of education and improvement of standards of life are just going down the drain. The study was carried out through qualitative method through a phenomenological approach. Snowballing, interviews, observations and focus group discussions were made use of in gathering the data for this article. Presentation is mainly descriptive since the type of data gathered depended much on the experiences and feelings of the people in the society. The study was based on interviews from 5 purposively selected individuals who provided detailed data. Names of individuals in this article are pseudo to protect the identity of the individuals. A number of recommendations were put forward that include all concerned stakeholders to take action to rectify the said problem.

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