Andile Tshuma
A Bulawayo based women’s organisation has embarked on an art for change project where it uses murals to fight teenage pregnancies and child marriages in Matabeleland provinces.
The Women’s Institute of Leadership Development (WILD) has partnered with artistes to paint impactful messages that speak against sexual relationships with minors.
The project is being implemented in Matabeleland South and Bulawayo, in districts where high teenage pregnancies have been reported.
Speaking to the Daily News yesterday, project associate Payton Sibanda said art had been identified as one of the most effective mechanisms to advocate for ending child marriages.
“We are trying to amplify young women’s voices through visual expressions. So, the mural from Umzingwane depicts the plight of child marriages in Umzingwane. We are making our contribution to the rhetoric that seeks to speak out against child marriages,” Sibanda said.
He added: “In Zimbabwe, child marriages frequently stop a girl’s education, expose her to domestic violence and serious health risks associated with early childbirth and HIV, and keep her in poverty. A small township like Habane, a peri-urban gold panning community in Esigodini, isn’t isolated from such societal anomalies. There have been several cases where children below the age of 16 years of age are married off, which is a pandemic ravaging a lot of children in Habane township”.
Some of the murals, Sibanda said, highlight the devastating effects of child marriages in Zimbabwe, where at least 40 percent of girls marry before they reach the age of 18 years.
“During the painting of the murals, young women who were available noted that child marriages are now deemed as a popular trait among indigenous apostolic churches, charismatic evangelical denominations that blend Christian beliefs with local traditions and have 1.2 million members across the country”.
He said lack of knowledge was another factor leading to early child marriages and said the mural helped give information to communities through art and aesthetics.
