Zimpapers Logo

Perspective Stephen Mpofu
Can it be said with equanimity that a decision by traditional leaders voluntarily to present themselves for HIV/Aids testing and counselling, as reported recently in the press, puts Zimbabwean society on the doorway of social change? On a hunch this pen suggests that if this move becomes pervasive it will not only impact positively on the campaign to curb the rampant transmission of the virus that causes Aids, which has become one of the most deadliest diseases to date; it will be a feather in the cap of women’s conjugal and human rights so that the Zimbabwean woman can work with her head raised with pride.

To begin with, this pen makes a deliberate claim that polygamy has become a burden on postmodernity and redundant in one aspect, which is that in the past when blacks in this country possessed vast tracts of land and many men married more than one wife to produce more children for labour in their crop fields.

Now, however, with not much land to talk of and with mechanisation the norm, old traditional societal practices have of necessity become dinosaurs as it were.

There is not enough food to go round or to sell for cash to feed and cloth abnormally large families from a polygamous marriage with the result that under- nourishment becomes a curse on an oversized family with some children having to make do with glorious rags on their emaciated bodies.

A nuclear family with in most cases both parents working and with one, two or three children becomes the ideal family in modern Zimbabwe, as in other societies where economies remain less affluent to produce goods and services that will support abnormally large families.

With the HIV/Aids scourge rampaging across many societies today, this pen has it on medical authority that polygamy is an active agent in the spread of the deadly disease, Aids. A medical doctor in Bulawayo, unnamed here for professional reasons, does endorse the precipitating role that a polygamous marriage plays in spreading HIV, although he regrets that “clusters of people hold a contrary view to that fact.”

But, surely, a man 80 years of age, or there about, who marries an 18-year-old girl or one slightly older, as his second wife or to a retinue of wives is wont to cause volcanic eruptions in the polygamy with at most disharmony resulting and at worst the lava or larvae consuming the marriage or marriages.

If, for instance, the first wife exercises her seniority by monopolising the husband, the second wife or several other wives will feel that their conjugal rights are infringed or remain unrequited might, as is often the case, outsource sexual satiation from outside the perimeter of their conjugal turf, putting themselves at risk to HIV infection.

If, for instance, the first wife exercises her seniority by monopolising the husband, the second wife or several other wives will feel that their conjugal rights are infringed or remain unrequited might, as is often the case, outsource sexual satiation from outside the perimeter of their conjugal turf, putting themselves at risk to HIV infection.

When that happens, the woman engaging in an extra marital affair will come back home and light a veld fire in the husband and which will rampage through the other polygamous wives with devastating consequences.

In contrast, a one-man, one-wife relationship accompanied with absolute fidelity remains the hope of survival for many, many homes and societies in the Aids-ravaged age.

Contextually, therefore the courageous women of Zimbabwe, engaged in a crusade for the rights of women should also re-focus attention on polygamy as an infringement on the rights of women, human and conjugal.

Moreover men marrying more women merely to flaunt masculinity should be seen as being involved in wanton violation of the rights of women to enjoy the protection of one man and to have their conjugal rights requited without their having to be compelled by circumstance to indulge in an adulterous affair which is a blatant violation of God’s seventh commandment and, therefore an unpardonable sin in the eyes of the Almighty.

Considering that traditional leaders have a tendency of taking in more wives than one, their voluntary involvement in the anti-HIV/Aids campaign lights a glimmer of hope that polygamists and other married men will follow the example of their leaders in what is clearly a long-drawn war against the Aids virus which originated in a laboratory in the West where a heinous plot was hatched in the first place to culture a virus that would, according to researchers, exterminate the black race.

That experiment went haywire, however, so it has been claimed indisputably.