Zimbabwean teen teaches taekwondo to fight child marriage

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — In Zimbabwe, where girls as young as 10 are forced to marry due to poverty or traditional and religious practices, a teenage taekwondo enthusiast is using the sport to give girls in an impoverished community a fighting chance at life.

“Not many people do taekwondo here, so it’s fascinating for the girls, both married and single. I use it to get their attention,” said 17-year old Natsiraishe Maritsa, a martial arts fan since the age of five, who is now using taekwondo to rally young girls and mothers to join hands and fight child marriage.

Children as young as four and some of Natsiraishe’s former schoolmates who are now married, line up on the tiny, dusty yard outside her parents’ home in the poor Epworth settlement, about nine miles southeast of the capital, Harare.

They enthusiastically follow her instructions to stretch, kick, strike, punch and spar.

After class, they talk about the dangers of child marriage.

Holding their babies, the recently married girls took the lead.

One after the other, they narrated how their marriages have turned into bondage, including verbal and physical abuse, marital rape, pregnancy-related health complications, and being hungry.

“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.

“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.

Neither boys nor girls may legally marry until the age of 18, according to Zimbabwean law enacted after the Constitutional Court in 2016 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.

Some religious sects encourage girls as young as 10 to marry much older men for “spiritual guidance,” while some families, to avoid “shame,” force girls who engage in pre-marital sex to marry their boyfriends, according to the organization.

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