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Currently, Zambia is ranked 16th amongst countries with the highest rate of child marriage in the world, and although the Marriage Act establishes a legal age for marriage, and the Penal Code makes sex with a girl under 16 an offence in Zambia, these provisions rarely apply in customary law.
Owing to this, early child marriage has become a vital topic of discussion amongst several development platforms, so much that the vice has now become even more visible to many people, including those that were previously unaware of its existence.
And as the local proverb goes: “One finger cannot crush a louse”. There is indeed strength in numbers.
This proverb holds true in the fight against early or forced marriage.
The future of most girls is threatened by early or forced marriage, making it a national concern, bringing many organisations and people on board, all in an effort to mitigate it – this includes 30-year-old Choma-based activist Genious Musokotwane.
I caught up with the budding youth who has decided to dedicate not only his time, but also resources, to fighting the vice and sending children, especially girls, to school.
At his young age, Mr Musokotwane is also executive director for the Musokotwane Compassion Mission Zambia (MCMZ), a Choma-based non-profit and youth-led organisation that frontiers the fight against child marriages.
Not only that, his organisation, which has on a number of occasions retrieved many girls from forced or arranged marriages in Choma and surrounding areas, has also been ensuring that it meets their needs.
“I am just a simple Zambian, life transformation servant driven leader,” is how Mr Musokotwane describes himself.
Born in Kalomo in 1992, Mr Musokotwane was raised by a single parent, a thing that motivated him to found MCMZ.
“I grew up to know that I was a solution to my community,” he says. “When my mother died when I was 10 years old, I went to live in the village and my time in the village as a young boy birthed my passion to bring about positive change.”
At the age of 14, an opportunity availed itself for him to attend a boy’s camp under Peace Corps as a volunteer.
“At the end of the camp, we were all asked to take a quiet moment and reflect on things we would love to change in our communities,” he says. “It was at this point that the early child marriage problem resurfaced. It was in the same year that the 2007 Demographic Health Survey on Zambia was released and it indicated that half of Zambian women were married before the age of 18 years.”
Out of his passion, Genious, then aged 15, engaged Chief Chikanta of Kalomo district and Chief Cooma of Choma district and shared with them his ideas on the best practices of ending early, forced and child marriages in their chiefdoms.
“It was at this point in 2008 that Musokotwane Compassion Mission Zambia (MCMZ) was founded with the sole purpose of influencing chiefdoms, traditional leaders, government and others to end child marriages and also meet basic needs of girls retrieved from such toxic unions,” he says.
Today, MCMZ is a member of the Girls Not Brides global partnership on ending child marriages worldwide. It is also an approved Public Benefit Organisation (PBO) in the republic of Zambia.
“Since inception, over 500 girls have been retrieved and put back in school under the advocacy, education and capacity building thematic areas,” says Mr Musokotwane.
His organisation has since expanded its operations into Kazungula district, adding on the other three districts, Monze, Pemba and Choma.
MCMZ is also a transit facility for survivors of child marriage. This, he says, is done in accordance with the Government's vision and aspiration to reduce the number of children raised in institutional care through the implementation of an alternative care plan where the organisation partners with a volunteer family to keep and care for any such survivor or child.
The organisation is also a trainer of trainers in organisation strategic planning, data for decision making, monitoring and evaluation and also trainer of trainers in child protection policy and disability inclusion.
It is also building classes for its formal and skills training school at its Choma farm as part of its transition into a transit centre for survivors of sexual violence and child marriage.
Asked what it was like setting up MCMZ, Mr Musokotwane says it was challenging at first, but has no regrets now.
“But I believed in myself, I understood God had called me to this and I never expected a smooth path. With this view in mind, it made everything easy. Also, Chief Chikanta and Chief Cooma supported me with what I needed and knowing that I had such traditional leaders behind me, and being called for this made the whole thing adventurous,” he says.
“The programmes are being received very well as we have traditional leaders raising the flag to end child marriage and over five chiefs and their headmen have been trained and are now champions of ending child marriage.”
He says in rural areas, it is always important to work with traditional leaders if you want to achieve positive change.
He says child marriage has been a traditional practice that has escalated now because of poverty levels.
He recalls how while in primary school, a school mate got married off and later lost her life during child birth. Up to now, it still hurts him that his schoolmate had no one to stand up for her.
“If someone stood [up] for her not to be married off, she probably would still be alive today. This has continued to pop up in every case that we come across and that's what drives us to stand for girls and help even when we have little to give to the down-trodden girls and children,” he says.
The impact isn’t just on society and the retrieved girls. It has also had an impact on Mr Musokotwane.
He says: “Serving as a lead servant at MCMZ has made me realise that we are all tools in God's hands. The opportunity has changed my view of success as not the acquisition of fame, material things or money but by how our actions, lifestyle and character bring the kingdom of heaven to those in distress.”
He adds: “The privilege to serve under this organisation has made me have a global view on how best we can improve our communities and the country’s social and economic development for all.”
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MCMZ retrieves girls from child marriages and provides them with shelter, basic needs, and education support through a school sponsorship programme.
“MCMZ work improves the protection, health and education chances for girls, and widens their economic opportunities in society,” he says.
“Child marriages are mainly driven by poverty, perception of girls as only good for marriage, inequality among boys and girls, and also [bad] traditional practices. We can curtail these by investing in the education of girls, especially those at risk of falling into the trap and also those already retrieved.”
He adds that improved economic opportunities for families in rural areas are key in the fight against the vice.
“Since inception, we have been dealing with 20 cases on average, annually. We need to abolish all those traditional practices that impede the development of young girls,” he says.
To keep afloat, the organisation has some income generating activities such as farming, beverage brewing and supply, fundraising galas and musical concerts, crowd funding and individual donors.
He says a number of prominent private and public schools in the district have partnered with his organisation to offer scholarships to the girls under its auspices and care.
It operates within four thematic areas, namely, advocacy, capacity building, child protection, and education support.
“We hardly face resistance when rescuing these girls from these toxic marriages,” he says. “We are part of the victim's family support who are mostly the ones that report such cases to us and these are the same families we rely on for alternative care.”
Mr Musokotwane, who has been married for slightly under two years now, has earned himself a name for his actions and contribution to society. While acknowledging a reduction in the number of any such cases, he advises parents to desist from sending their children into early marriages.
“The reduction could be attributed to concerted efforts by stakeholders and the government's free education policy. However, there is a need to continue addressing the poverty levels among rural areas as the vice is mostly propelled by poverty and hunger in most of these areas,” he says.
Mr Musokotwane who is also a promising young farmer in Southern province studied public relations at Evelyn Hone College and also spent some years in South Africa studying Missions and Leadership and while there, worked for a number of charitable organisations.
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