Dear Editor,
I have no problem with 16 being the minimum marriage age for girls.
What Parliamentarians are trying to do is to ban any girl below the age of 16 from getting married.
So, where is the problem? I recently watched a TV documentary which compared Africans with people from continents.
In the documentary, it was revealed that an African woman is a workaholic.
Most men in Africa spend much of their time drinking beer, leaving women to work for them.
At 16, an African girl is already shouldering a huge responsibility: cooking, washing plates, caring for their sick mothers, fetching water from the well and others.
Some parents are dying of dying of HIV and Aids leaving behind orphans with no one to look after.
Of course, very few are lucky to be raised by their grandparents.
The problem is that we think Malawi is America.
Malawi is in Africa not America. So there is no need to copy western values.
Harry Mangulenje,
Blantyre-The Nation, Friday, August 28,2009.
I have no problem with 16 being the minimum marriage age for girls.
What Parliamentarians are trying to do is to ban any girl below the age of 16 from getting married.
So, where is the problem? I recently watched a TV documentary which compared Africans with people from continents.
In the documentary, it was revealed that an African woman is a workaholic.
Most men in Africa spend much of their time drinking beer, leaving women to work for them.
At 16, an African girl is already shouldering a huge responsibility: cooking, washing plates, caring for their sick mothers, fetching water from the well and others.
Some parents are dying of dying of HIV and Aids leaving behind orphans with no one to look after.
Of course, very few are lucky to be raised by their grandparents.
The problem is that we think Malawi is America.
Malawi is in Africa not America. So there is no need to copy western values.
Harry Mangulenje,
Blantyre-The Nation, Friday, August 28,2009.
As much as the August house endorsed the age of 16 as the marying age for the girlsdoes not mean that is the right thing just to rubber stumped by all.
ReplyDeleteIf we do the mathematics correctly we will realise that by that age the girls are in form two if they are following the the conventional school method and assuming no class is repeated.Now are we wishing the country the best?Because what is being created here is a Malawi whose girls are not educated as most of them are rushed into mariage....no good precedence
Secondary to that, the fact that these girls can assume resposibility because the family members are dead of HIV does not mean they mentally mature that is just circumstacial and happens just by coincidence that she is the first born in the family.Do we want to see a situation where there is no leader in the house because the parents are dead?
In countries like USA it is even illegal for someone over 20years to have sex with someone in these age ranges we are trying to legalise marriages in.All is happening because they want to protect the girls from libidous men who advote the girls to be abused.
In the end we are going to have a situation where alot of girls (may be by that time will be women)who are divorced from marriages more especially around 24 years of their ages or so.
I hope and believe we come up with laws that are protecting the girls more if we want Malawi to have a future that is bright and full of eduacted people.There is a saying that goes "educate a woman you educate the nation"
Ine Joel ndi Moses Nyirongo tikutero
thanks
Joel/Moses.Guys you have hit it on the head.Most parliamentelians have their children abroad or in nice colleges.At 16 agirl should still be in school or college.I wonder if these guys will marry off their daughters at 16 years.I think DPP majority is causing such problems..dont get me wrong i like DPP but integrity has to come first.
ReplyDeleteI fail to understand why people call 16 the minimum age. The legal minimum age is 18. But the constitution say in circumstances where some thing has happened a girl can be married at 16 but with the consent of parents. The real minimum is the age where one can marry without getting a consent from someone, and that age in Malawi is 18.
ReplyDelete