20 October 2014:
Women should take a stand against the custom of ukuthwala, or forced marriage, women from around the Eastern Cape were told at a conference at the St Saviours Anglican Church on Friday.
The conference was hosted by the Masimanyane Women’s Support Centre to discuss the manner in which the practice is being carried out by people who claim to be following tradition.
Pumla Madiba of the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural , Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL Rights Commission) said that there was no tradition in the current practice of ukuthwala.
“There’s a major difference in the custom and what is happening now. What does a 12-year-old girl child know about being a wife and running a household? How sick must a man in his 70s be to sleep with a girl who is probably young enough to be his grandchild,” she asked.
A woman from Kwelera, who identified herself as Mamu Dyani, said the state needed to intervene and put a stop to the practice.
“It is we women who are abducted against our will. It is we women who want the government to put a stop to this because we do not want it,” she said.
The chairwoman of research and policy development at the CRL Rights Commission, Bernadette Muthien, has compiled a report from four provinces including the Eastern Cape. “This is a common factor among the migrant labourers and miners. The biggest factors are lack of education and poverty,” she said.
Novelile Sangotha, an elderly woman from Mlakalaka near King William’s Town, said this was the one time women needed to stand together and not sell each other out.
“We tend to drive our kids to marry into rich homes because we hope to inherit the riches of another family, but this is not the case. Instead it costs us everything we have. In most cases the elderly men who marry our children die from HIV, leaving our daughters with HIV and fatherless children.”
Masimanyane Centre director Dr Lesley Ann Foster said there had been a dire need for such a conference.
“We’ve been getting lots of reports about this critical issue, and we want to ensure the right information is out there, and to give a voice to the victims of ukuthwala.”
The legal adviser from the Commission of Gender Equality, Kerry Oosthuysen, said a case of ukuthwala involving an Eastern Cape girl is due to be heard in the Western Cape High Court on Thursday. — mbalit@dispatch.co.za