‘Fight against child marriages’
CHENGETAI MURIMWA IN GWERU
Popular 98.4FM Midlands radio presenter, DJ Vas, will next week launch a campaign against child marriages as he makes an appeal to citizens to join hands and fight the scourge.
The campaign, running under the theme, A child is not a bride, aims to save millions of young girls who are being taken as wives below the legal age of marriage.
“Child marriage is taking a child below the legal age of marriage ,which is 18 years, for marriage and this has led to a lot of complications especially during birth and a lot of them die as the child’s body will not have fully matured to bear children,” DJ Vas said.
He said many parents are giving away their children below the legal age of marriage in exchange for food and other commodities due to the lockdown imposed by the government to curb the spread of Covid-19 pandemic.
“I am a parent, an uncle, a guardian and so on. I was hurt when that 14-year-old girl died at a Johane Marange shrine while giving birth and nothing so far has been done to punish the offender, who married an underage. My heart bleeds when I see little girls being sent off for marriage, let them be children, not brides,” Dj Vas said.
He says the campaign will be ongoing as a number of activities and programmes are lined up for the next four months.
Dj Vas said he will be working with several artistes.
“I love art, I bleed art, and therefore I cannot side-line artistes. I will be working with willing artistes in the campaign, visual artists, poets, singers and more. Artistes are important tools when delivering a message to the masses.
Let’s join hands and fight against child marriages, once again a child is not a bride,” he said.
