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Stephen Mpofu, Perspective

THE discourse in this Saturday’s column could not resist a compelling need to invite Zimbabweans, regardless of their political persuasions, to shower the First Lady, Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa with praise as mother of our Zimbabwean nation for the extraordinary role she plays in empowering women, children, the elderly, widows, the disabled and a host of other vulnerable groups to play greater roles on both the home front and in national development initiatives, under the auspices of her Angel of Hope Foundation and nothing better should make Zimbabweans hug themselves with glee for making our country a better place in which to live and enjoy for all.

In contrast to the roles that the beloved wife of our country’s incumbent President plays tirelessly, history has immortalised accounts of pugnacious political confrontations by other First Ladies against potential male rivals for the highest political office in the land of old age, illness or even death creating a Presidential vacancy, but ill luck quashed their hopes of being called President Mrs so and so.

In the circumstances, a picture that proud Zimbabweans post abroad about themselves is wont to make other people in the global village envy us and try to emulate the Zimbabwean way of doing things as a collective family regardless of political, religious or tribal differences, but for this big fly in the ointment — gallivanters and solicitors for sex, for money, for posh lifestyles, the nipping in the bud of which the law of this country has finally read the riot act, as recently widely reported on local radio.

This discourse refers to a recent important national announcement about the long arm of the country’s law brooking no more nonsense with men who sexually prey on teenage girls below the 18 years age of consent who will now rot as it were in jail for 10 years — a legal sanction that many hope will reduce or better still end teenage pregnancies which have ruined better future prospects for many young women in our country with, in many cases, their education and planned future careers rendered null and void.

 Which is all very well, considering the gravity of those satanic touch-and-go relationships which amount to the saying: “vanity of vanities”.

But to be fair in this discourse, not all men prance around holding their reproductive organs in their hands to pounce on pretty innocent girls to ravish them.

It is however, a sad reality that some young girls solicit — YES, SOLICIT — for sex for money to, for instance, buy a pair of high-heeled shoes that register their presence on every scene and to be seen worn by friends or peers or for the purchase of skirts with stylish centre vents for the lure of the opposite sex, or in order to have a hairdo like that other girls and which is a potential magnet for men’s eyes.

In all fairness, however, women like the ones in point here should surely also face the wrath of the Zimbabwean law for wooing men to bed before marriage and in the process also committing crime like the men who violate the innocence of teenage girls.

Which suggests that those assigned to investigate cases of men violating the innocence of teenage girls should be thorough and impartial in their questioning to discover exactly who lured whom for the sexual act so that if the young girl roped the man in to the act she too must be prosecuted and sentenced to 10 years behind bars if a court finds her guilty of luring a man or men into committing a sexual act with her.

It is just as well that legal sanctions in point above are being taken to curb, if not altogether end the situation whereby men prey on innocent young girls or are lured by girls from poor family backgrounds into committing premarital sexual acts for personal benefits which if not ruthlessly curbed before they get worse, marriage between a man and a woman who have reached or passed the age of majority will be like a second-hand clothing shop. But, unlike the clothing shop the man will not take back the new wife to her parents on discovering that she’s no longer innocent or a virgin but a second-hand garment previously worn by an unknown number of men and demand a refund of the lobola/roora that he paid for her.

All things considered, the sad situation of sickening teenage pregnancies and the general violations of the innocence of teenage girls under the spotlight above in this discourse must certainly point to something gone berserk in our Zimbabwean culture, so to speak, with fingers agonisingly pointing at poor or altogether non-existent socialisation in families so that young girls are wont to cross red social life robots and into disaster-filled destinations in life: rampant teenage pregnancies and divorces as a result of the absence of and/or poor parental or family guidance.

But what has happened to our country’s old cultural practices under which young girls growing into adulthood and marriage were thoroughly prepared for that by elderly female relatives on how to care for themselves body wise and practice wise as every potential husband prayed for a better half so that at marriage the two became one, as it were, to raise families of their own and prepare them for brave new futures?

 Or are today’s older women to whom the younger ones of their gender must look forward to for guidance were themselves formerly delinquent in their lives so that they lack virtuous knowledge to prepare their young offspring for better, lasting marriages?

In the circumstances, the alternative that appears to exist for young women to not be entrapped in haphazard lifestyles before marriage is to run away from human beasts prowling around — and these are gallivanters and potential ruiners of bright futures of teenage girls in academic and/or career institutions who otherwise should become potential leaders and builders of this beautiful country with beautiful people, our motherland.