Zimbabwean teen teaches taekwondo to fight child marriage
January 15, 2020
Women's groups have warned that child and early marriages could be on the rise as COVID-19 keeps children away from school and deepens poverty. With a high prevalancy in Zimbabwe, where girls as young as 10 are forced to marry due to poverty or harmful practices, 17-year-old Natsiraishe Maritsa is using taekwondo to give girls from the impoverished community a fighting chance in life.
Maritsa, a martial arts fan since the age of five, uses taekwondo to rally young girls and mothers to join together to fight child marriage. Through her association, the Vulnerable Underaged People’s Auditorium, she hopes to increase the confidence of both married and unmarried girls through the martial arts lessons and the discussions that follow.
Though classes are currently paused due to the pandemic, typically participants "enthusiastically follow her instructions to stretch, kick, strike, punch and spar." After a session, children - some as young as four - and some of Maritsa’s now married former schoolmates from the Epworth settlement near the capital of Harare, talk about the dangers of child marriage. They then share how their early marriages turned into bondage, marital rape, physical abuse and pregnancy-related health complications.
“We are not ready for this thing called marriage. We are just too young for it,” Maritsa told The Associated Press after the session, which she said is “a safe space” for the girls to share ideas.
“From being hopeless, the young mothers feel empowered ... being able to use their stories to dissuade other girls from falling into the same trap,” said Maritsa, who started the project in 2018 after seeing her friends end their schooling due to marriage.
Under Zimbabwean law, neither boys nor girls may legally marry until the age of 18, which was enacted in 2016 after the Constitutional Court struck down earlier legislation that allowed girls to marry at 16.
Nonetheless, the practice remains widespread in the economically struggling southern African nation, where an estimated 30% of girls are married before reaching 18, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund. Child marriage is prevalent across Africa, and rising poverty amid the COVID-19 pandemic has increased pressures on families to marry off their young daughters.
For some poor families in Zimbabwe, marrying off a young daughter means one less burden, and the bride price paid by the husband is often “used by families as a means of survival,” according to Girls Not Brides, an organization that campaigns to end child marriages.
“The role of teen mothers is usually ignored when people campaign against child marriages. Here, I use their voices, their challenges, to discourage those young girls not yet married to stay off early sexual activity and marriage,” said Maritsa.
Credit: story and images from AP News.