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| Features |
| Constitutional review: Extending marriage age? |
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by
Felix Malamula, 07 February 2006
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05:24:15
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The on-going constitutional review process has attracted diverse input on the changes that should be made to current document. Chiefs, non-governmental organisations, the clergy and the youths have all been consulted to have their views incorporated into the Constitution.
One of the views coming from youth organisations is that the marriage age, currently at 18, should be extended. The organisations feel this minimum age of entry into the marriage contract is encouraging parents to force their children, mainly girls, to get married while very young.
Youth Net and Counselling (Yoneco) Executive Director McBen Mkandawire says some people get into marriage at a point when they are too young to make mature decisions. Therefore, Mkandawire says the youths are right to demand extension of the entry point into marriage.
“The problem we have in the country is that we create a lot of loopholes in our laws. Our laws say a child is anybody below the age of 18, but the same laws accept marriage of such children as long as they get consent from parents. This is a loophole,” reasons Mkandawire.
Mkandawire feels such children cannot understand issues to do with sexuality. He says children’s sexual desires are driven by infatuation and not real love.
“The problem is, this is the period when a lot of things happen within the bodies of such children and they may be driven into marriages not by love but infatuation,” he says.
Section 22 (7) of the Constitution reads: “For persons between the age of 15 and 18 years a marriage shall only be entered into with the consent of their parents.”
Sub-section 8 of the same section states that “the state shall actually discourage marriage between persons where either of them is under the age of 15 years.”
So, the state can only discourage but not bar marriages in a situation where one or both partners are below 15 years. This means even 10-year olds can marry!
Director for Eye of the Child Maxwell Matewere agrees with those pushing for the idea of extending the minimum marriage age. But Matewere is quick to observe that the extension might not favour girls who he feels grow faster than boys.
“We agree as an organisation with the view but it might not work to the advantage of girls because, as you are aware, girls grow faster than boys,” he observes.
Matewere concurs with Mkandawire that individuals below 18 are not mature enough to withstand the pressure of the responsibilities that come with marriage.
“We have received a lot of cases where girls are coming back from marriages because they have failed to withstand the pressure that comes with marriage,” discloses Matewere.
However, there is no denying that the country has some good pieces of legislation but are not enforced. This means that even if the country pushes the minimum marriageable age to 21, enforcement would still be a problem.
Matewere agrees that enforcement of the laws is a big problem in the country.
“It would be useless to have such a provision when, for instance, we don’t have birth certificates or birth registration which would give out the dates of birth of the individuals entering into a marriage contract,” reasons Matewere.
“So the first step should be to introduce birth certificates or birth registration if the extension of the marriage age is to make any sense,” he adds.
But Chief Lukwa of Kasungu says there is no need to extend the minimum marriage age, saying doing so would not automatically translate into girls or boys stopping from indulging in sexual activities.
“That is not the solution if we are to deal with the problem of children entering marriage early. Extension of the marriage age will not stop our children from indulging in promiscuity,” explains Lukwa.
“What should happen is for government, chiefs, parents and everybody to teach these children the importance of education. If they understand this and start loving their studies, it will be difficult for them to leave school and opt for marriage,” argues Lukwa.
He blames the culture of hiding issues to do with sexuality from the children, which he says, makes the children fail to understand the issues while young.
Lukwa says there is need to discuss these issues with children at both household and school levels.
“Unfortunately, the culture of hiding these issues from children has gone further by even infiltrating our education system,” he observes.
Thabo Nyirenda, a final year law student at Chancellor College, argues that age has played a part in the recent spate of cases of domestic violence. Nyirenda says when minors marry, they are likely to run into trouble as they are not mature enough to make sound decisions.
“Another effect of marriage entered into by minors is that the marriage is susceptible to enormous material difficulties: Both mother and father dropped out of elementary school at a very tender age. As a result, the parents cannot acquire work beyond manual work.
“They do not have entrepreneurial skills or they have too little farming skills which they could have obtained had they continued with their studies. They hardly read or write. They cannot acquire adequate knowledge of developments in farming and business or any other kind of entrepreneurship. You can guess the result. Turmoil.,” argues Nyirenda. |
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