Speaking when he hosted Paramount Chief Mpezeni at Community House on Sunday, President Hichilema said the recently revealed divorce statistics were unfortunate.
“We marry for love, we don’t marry to go and check each other out. What am I saying? Marriages must be kept, marriage is an institution, [it] is the oldest institution for humanity. I want to encourage Zambians to understand the genesis of marriage, the godliness of marriage, raising a family,” he said. “Countries anchored on communities, communities anchored on families. So, family unity is extremely important.”
According to recent local court data that was made available to the Zambia Daily Mail, the number of couples who asked the courts to dissolve their marriages throughout the country had risen by about 9,000 cases to reach 31,000 last year from 22,000 recorded in 2021.
Now, by any means, that is huge!
“How we manage ourselves as husband and wife, how we manage our children has a bearing on how society is or will be. So, those statistics (divorce cases) are unfortunate,” said President Hichilema. “But also sometimes, I must tell you, the freedom that we ask for must have limits. Some of the polarisation of marriages comes from checking on your wife’s phone all the time, sneaking there, checking the messages.”
He continued: “Even a general message you interpret it to mean this is a message that suggests something else. Innocent message. So, sometimes we must limit our freedom. Freedom means responsibility to limit our freedom, not to tamper with the freedom of others. Be tolerant, be understanding.”
From the 31,452 applications for divorce, the courts gave the go-ahead to 15,147 while 16,305 were not granted.
The reasons for seeking divorce are familiar – infidelity and drunkenness.
The shortest marriage among those dissolved lasted nine days and involved a couple from Eastern Province, the region that has been recording the highest number of divorce cases the last three years.
The oldest couple that sought divorce lasted about 78 years in matrimony in North-Western Province compared to 67 years in 2021. It is presumed the couple must be nonagenarians, even taking child marriage into consideration.
Commenting on the issue, Catholic priest Hermane Kouacou says in contrast to the figures, we have many couples that are living happily despite the challenges inherent to human living.
“Divorces have many reasons, so it will be erroneous to single out one reason as the main cause of divorce today,” he said. “Jesus, in Mark 10:1-12 made it clear that man should not divide what God has united. In other words, he is saying that marriage, which is a sacred institution and
a sacrament for the Church, is for life.”
Fr Kouacou, who is the assistant priest at Kabwata Parish, adds that ultimately, society suffers devastating effects of divorce.
“It is a bigger problem when children are involved,” he says. “Marriage is not only a meeting of two people but it involves a big range of realities that get affected after divorce. In a nutshell, it is the society, at large, that suffers from a broken relationship.”
He also urges people not to overlook every stage of preparation for marriage.
“Once an old couple was asked how they managed to stay together for so long. They smiled and replied that they grew up in a time where people were educated to fix broken things and not to throw them away.
“On top of that, one can mention the lack of communication and dialogue, which are fundamental to any relationship. Impatience can also be pointed out as characteristic of this technological era. The least one can say is that marriage is for life. Consequently, we encourage couples to fix what can be fixed to avoid themselves, children, and society suffering from the devastating effects of divorce,” he said.
Many studies have found that children of divorced families experienced lower levels of well-being regardless of scholastic achievement, conduct, psychological development, self-esteem, social competence, and relationships with other children.
“Thus, one has to live with a child coming from a broken relationship to understand all the traumas that divorce enforces on children and how it distorts their view of the world and marriages,” he said. “For our part, we believe that nobody is to be blamed for the increasing number of marriages.
“We have to admit that the whole of our society is sick, and not only the aspect of marriage.”
Further, research has also indicated that divorced adults are more likely to become impoverished while their children experience psychological and economic stress, which delays their social, psychological and economic development.
Other researchers also believe that divorce, which is hated by God, according to Malachi 2:16, slows economic growth. However, those reasons appear not to be a discouragement among couples who cannot agree on certain issues.
“There is too much relaxed living among both men and women in marital unions. There is competition for beer drinking, infidelity and lack of respect. People do not respect the institution of marriage nor place value in it,” says Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) executive director Mirriam Mwiinga.
Ms Mwiinga says nowadays people are not listening to counsel from elders.
“They listen to their friends and go to social media for advice. Mediation and conflict resolution are not considered important,” she said. “People marry for wrong reasons. They want a fancy wedding, pictures, fame and all. They do not realise that the institution of marriage is bigger than the wedding event itself. It is bigger than all the frenzy that goes with a wedding.”
Veteran musician and marriage counsellor Mary Miti, popularly known as Mama Nyongo, says people should not overlook the importance of going through traditional marriage counselling prior to getting married.
Ms Miti says traditional marriage counselling for both males and females in the lead-up to marriage is important as it gives a strong foundation for the union to last. She says couples that go through traditional marriage counselling before marriage stand a better chance of not going through a divorce at some point in their union.
Ms Miti has, however, noted that some people don’t take the lessons seriously even after going through intensive traditional marriage counselling with their *Bana chimbusa* and *Bashi bukombe.*
She said doing so creates a weak foundation of a marriage.
“Nowadays, we have many divorce cases because of such tendencies of overlooking the teachings or simply not taking them seriously and just doing them for the sake of formality only. That is not how it should be,” she said.
Ms Miti advises that traditional marriage teachings be done side by side with church and biblical teachings because they are both important in marriage.
She said she appreciates the role that the Church and the Bible play in a home.
“God is everything and there is no way you can ignore His critical role in marriage when He is put in the centre. But in the same way, traditional marriage counselling is important because it helps preserve our culture and helps couples to overcome and solve problems that they may encounter in their marriage,” she said.
It is an open secret that divorce leads to broken families and
multiplies the number of vulnerable children, a situation which parents should
avoid.
Most of the testimonies from street kids point to divorce between their parents as the cause for their fate. While it is recognised that sometimes divorce is inevitable given the degree of the problem in marriage, parents are urged to consider the feelings of their children before they go separate ways because break-up of marriages has a long-standing psychological effect on the children, who mostly end up having a negative perception of marriage when they grow up, such as the case for Pamela Mumba.
Ms Mumba, now 24, was raised by a single mother. Her parents divorced when she was five years old.
“To be frank with you, I don’t even look forward to marriage. I see no need for it since everything there is in marriage can be easily accessed even outside of it. People can easily adopt children if they so wish,” she says.
Human rights activist Gregory Cifire also weighs in and says: “Some problems we see in some children from broken homes emanate from the fact that they come from homes where parents are not talking. Children grow well when their parents are together,” he said.
Mr Cifire said divorce sometimes is not
the ultimate solution, although it happens.
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