Mampho*, a young girl of 13 is excited that after school today she is going to meet her 15 year-old boyfriend Rethabile* and spend some quality time together, after all today is Friday and a half-day for schooling.
Mampho is in Standard 7 at the same primary school that houses an upper secondary school at which Rethabile attends as a Form B student. They both grew up in the same village in Berea district and their families are known to each other.
Mampho’s family struggles to make ends meet as a her single mother has to look after three of her billings in the absence of the family’s father who is said to be working in the South African mines but rarely comes back home to visit.
On the other hand, Rethabile’s parents are staying with him and has many cattle, sheep and goats and have managed to send their children to school, after which some of his elder brothers are already working in Maseru at the Chinese shops and their wives and children are staying at the village.
On their way to the village, Rethabile way leads Mampho towards his homestead. She makes a little resistance but the boy convinces her that he wants to collect something before taking her to her village. Little does she know that this was the last day she would ever go back home as aunties and other elders at Rethabile’s village have already arranged a ‘welcome’ ceremony for Mampho as a ‘new addition’ to the family.
They tell her she was no longer going back to her parents’ home as she would now become ‘wife’ to the boy and that all arrangements for the ‘lobola’ would be announced in due course. Confused as she was, young Mampho has no other choice but to accept. She spends her first night in Rethabile’s bedroom and the rest is history.
The above scenario is typical of a perennial problem in many Basotho homes, particularly among rural communities. The practice of ‘ho shobelisa’ or eloping for the purposes of unplanned child marriage is quite common in Lesotho and the law is against it.
Child marriage is generally understood to mean marriages that take place before age of 18, but for many girls, marriage occurs much earlier. In some cases, girls as young as 12 to 15 are forced by their families to marry much older men. The reasons for the young girls getting married are diverse, and parents sometimes believe that through marriage, they are protecting their daughters and increasing their economic opportunities.
However, child marriage exposes girls to increased health problems and violence, and denies them access to social networks and support systems, and perpetuates a cycle of poverty and gender inequality.
Ministry of Social Development, working with World Vision Lesotho on Wednesday last week launched the campaign to end child marriage in the country to give the children their full human and child rights
Speaking at the event, Minister of Social Development ‘Matebatso Doti said child marriage perpetuates the cycles of poverty, poor health, illiteracy and violence, and all this leads to a negative impact on the overall development, prosperity and stability in the country.
Doti said ending child marriage was the right thing to do, adding that all young girls around the country deserve to live their full childhood lives, go to school, be free of the violence and negative health consequences associated with child marriage, and choose for themselves and without violence or coercion when and whom they marry.
She said in 2014 November 25th, the African Union (AU) Commission of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child launched the campaign to end child marriages, which is a pathway to end child marriages in Africa and providing a brighter future for millions of girls.
She said the AU campaign was launched upon realization that fundamental rights for young people, in particular young girls, had not been fulfilled. Doti said it was totally unacceptable that one in every three girls in low to middle income countries, Lesotho included, are married before they turn 18 and one in nine are married by age 15 years.
She said ending child marriages therefore remains a huge task for society and therefore all political, traditional and religious leadership, as well as the media and families should play their part to end this practice.
“The African Union made the decision that Africa should protect the child rights in all forms. There is need to continue the narrative of child marriage in the continent and as a huge movement regionally to end child marriage
Doti said the regional launching workshop was designed to boost on existing efforts to end child marriage in Africa as 16 African countries, Lesotho included, have already launched it with the observance of the Secretariat of the African Commission of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC).
Adding to that Advocate for Child Marriage from World Vision Lesotho ‘Maseisa Ntlama said in through the partnership with the Ministry of Social Development and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), they have already kick-started the campaign in 2015 where they managed to hold anti-child marriage campaigns in Thaba-Tseka, Mafeteng, Berea, Quthing, Qacha’s Nek and Mohale’s Hoek.
Ntlama said during the campaigns, there were many indicators child marriage in Lesotho communities was precipitated by poverty, which is high in the rural and hard-to-reach areas.
She said according to UNICEF studies, 36 percent of women aged 20-24 were married or in a union and were forced into marriage before they could attain the age of 18, and that the women were twice as likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than women in their 20s.
According to Ntlama child marriage has many causes which include amongst them cultural, social, economic and religious, and in many cases, a mixture of these results in the imprisonment of children in marriages without their consent
She continued to say that poverty was the biggest challenge, saying they had seen that child marriages increased during the el-Niño drought in 2015/16, and that poor families force their children into marriage to limit their food expenses or to make some money through lobola and escape the cycle of poverty.
Help Lesotho Country Director Shadrack Mutembei said child marriage directly hinders the accomplishment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which set development priorities for the world, and that the efforts to end child marriage and advance the health and rights of girls must be at the center of the global development agenda in order to end extreme poverty and ensure human rights for all.
Mutembei said the community must work together with other stakeholders to end child marriage as it still remains a huge problem around the country.
However, child marriage is a product of cultures that devalue women and girls and discriminate against them, in which ‘discrimination,’ according to a UNICEF report on ‘Child Marriage and the Law,’ often manifests itself in the form of domestic violence, marital rape, and deprivation of food, lack of access to information, education, healthcare and general impediments to mobility.