Why rugby is saving schoolgirls from child marriage in rural Zimbabwe
When the girls at Sahumani secondary school in eastern Zimbabwe started playing rugby, they had to make do with the soccer pitch and the oversized football shirts used by the boys. Five years on, several have represented their country in the sport, and many more credit it with saving them from becoming child brides in a nation where early marriage remains common despite being outlawed in 2016.
“I used to hate rugby. At the time I believed the sport was only for the elite and for men, not girls like me,” said Catherine Muranganwa, 20, who has played for Zimbabwe’s U18 and U20 women’s national rugby teams. Muranganwa, whose two sisters were married before they turned 18 – the legal marriage age in Zimbabwe, said the game had awakened her to different possibilities.
“When I travel for rugby I meet amazing women and I have realised that getting married early is not the right choice,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in her village in the Honde Valley, about 90 km (55 miles) from the city of Mutare.
Rugby is now compulsory for all the girls at Muranganwa’s school. “When the form 1s enrol with us we introduce them to rugby. There is a positive improvement regarding early marriages,” said headteacher Mwaradzika Makazouya, adding that the school’s long lockdown closure had raised the risk of girls being married off.
As of 2019, 32.6 per cent of a representative sample of some 8,000 women aged 20 to 49 years had been married before 18, according to the Zimbabwe multiple indicator cluster survey 2019. While there has been progress in the fight against early marriage in the southern African nation since it was banned, poverty and religious practices hamper efforts to stamp it out.
Some of our Zimbabwe Rugby women are part of the Women in Rugby Story. Spot them #tryandstopus. #rugbyafrique. pic.twitter.com/rQ6ZW8cSOi
— Official ZRU (@ZimRugbyUnion) September 24, 2020
Education is a key factor in determining the risk, and with schools mostly still shut due to the coronavirus pandemic, campaigners are warning there could be an increase in the practice. Around the world, an estimated 500,000 more girls are at risk of being forced into child marriage in 2020 as a result of the economic impact of Covid-19, a report by Save the Children showed on Thursday.
That would mark a four per cent year-on-year increase, reversing progress to reduce early marriage over the last 25 years, the charity said. James Maiden, a chief of communication at the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said low levels of education and socio-economic status raised the risk of being married off early in Zimbabwe.
“Women aged 20 to 49 with pre-primary or no education were 13 times more likely to (have been) married by age 18 compared to those with higher education,” he said. Girls from poor households were nearly four times more likely to be married compared before the legal marriage age than those from wealthy households, he added.
Muranganwa’s father, who was a polygamist with four wives, died when she was twelve and life has not been easy for her mother, a peasant farmer, and the rest of her family. He was a member of a church known for polygamy and marrying off girls before they reach the legal age of marriage.
Muranganwa, who walks 10kms (six miles) to get to Sahumani secondary school each day, said most girls who attend her church are married before they finish their primary education. “Young girls are usually married off to older polygamous men at an annual church gathering,” she said, adding that her mother has supported her in rejecting a string of marriage proposals despite pressure from other relatives.
Velme Nyarumwe, 20, one of Muranganwa’s fellow players on the Zimbabwe U20 women’s rugby team, said her four sisters were all wed before their 18th birthdays. “To my family, at 20 I’m already too late for marriage. They pile on pressure daily,” she said.
Many of the rugby-playing girls are the first in their families to reach form four, the final year of ordinary level education in Zimbabwe, said school rugby coach Patricia Makunike-Chakanya. Sahumani starting teaching girls rugby in 2015 in an initiative spearheaded by teachers who had also trained as coaches under the banner of the Zimbabwe Rugby Union.
Makunike-Chakanya, herself a victim of gender-based violence, got interested in the game in the 1980s when it was only played by men. She later trained as a coach, hoping to make the sport popular with girls too.
Besides honing their drop kicks, she spends time talking to the girls, listening to their worries and giving them advice. “Staying with some of the girls at the school gives me an opportunity to counsel them and to protect them from predatory men in the village,” Makunike-Chakanya said.
Most parents have rallied behind the girls’ rugby team, called The Valley Giants, and they no longer have to wear old soccer jerseys thanks to a sponsorship deal with a local seed company. “We realised that by not supporting them they would give up on sport and get into the community where they become vulnerable to all sorts of abuse,” said Ivan Craig, a director responsible for sales and marketing at Agriseeds.
Muranganwa now dreams of making a career in rugby so she can help support her family, while also seeing the world. “Marriage is not my priority now,” she said. “I wish to play for independent clubs in Botswana and South Africa as well as in Europe. I know with rugby I’m going to change my family’s life.”
– Thomson Reuters Foundation, covering the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org
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Comments on RugbyPass
We’re building a bridge but can't agree where the river is.
2 Go to commentsfirst no arms shoulder or helmet tackle into his rib cage is going to be so very painful even to watch. go back to RU mate.
1 Go to commentsBulls by 5. Plus another 50.
3 Go to commentsJohan Goosen avatar. Cute. Surely someone at RP knows how to do a google image search?
3 Go to commentsCan’t these games play a little earlier? Asking for a friend.
3 Go to commentsIt’s impressive that we can see huge stadiums with attendance in the 40 000 to 50 000 region. It shows how popular this competition is becoming. What is even more impressive is the massive growth in broadcast viewership. The URC is one of the two best leagues in the World, the other being the Top14.
7 Go to commentsChristie is not Sottish, like the majority of the Scotland team.
2 Go to commentsHold the phone, decline over-rated. Is it a one game, dead cat bounce or the real thing? Has the Penney dropped? Stay tuned.
45 Go to commentsTotally deserved win for the Crusaders Far smarter than the Chiefs who seem to be avoiding the basics when it matters Hotham showed them what was missing and Hannah seems a real find - a tad light but that can be fixed over time
8 Go to commentsGreat insight into the performance culture with Sarries and I predict Christie will be a fixture in the Scotland team now for some time to come. However, he is slightly missing his own point around Scotland “being soft” when he cites physicality examples in defence of that slight. The issue is much closer to the example he referenced around feeling off before a game but being told “it doesn’t matter, you can still play well” by Farrell. Until Scotland can get their psyche in that square, they will carry on folding under extreme pressure…
2 Go to comments> We are having to adapt, evolve and innovate more than when we were in Super Rugby where there was only really one style that everybody had to play to gain the most success. Have = able to? Interesting what that one style might be? I thought SA sides still had bad tours now, or at least bad schedule, months away? Those extra few hours flights have to be a killer though, no surprise to see their sides doing so badly at the start of the season each year. I wouldn’t enjoy that unfairness as a supporter.
7 Go to commentsThe problem for NZ, and Aus, is they ripped up the SR model and lost a massive chunk of revenue that hasn’t been replaced. Don’t forget SA clubs went North because they were left with no choice, Argy unceremoniously binned and Japan cast adrift. Now SR wasn’t perfect, far from it, but they’ve jumped into something without an effective plan, so far, to replace what they’ve lost. The biggest revenue potential now lies in Japan but it won’t be easy or quick to unlock, they are incredibly insular in culture as a nation. In the meantime, there is a serious time bomb sitting under SH rugby and if it happens then the current financial challenges will look like a picnic. IF the Boks follow their provincial teams and head north then it’s revenue meltdown. Not guaranteed to happen but the status quo is a very odd hybrid, with the Boks pointing one way and the clubs pointing the other way. And for as long as that remains then the threat is real.
45 Go to commentsI think Etene has had some good tuition, likely while at the Warriors to be a professional that helped his rugby jump, but he was certainly thrown in the deep end way too early. Should have arguably 20 less SR caps, and therefor a way better record that he does at his age, but his development would have been fast tracked by the need to satiate his signing away from league. Again, credit to him and others that he has done it so well. Easy to fall over under that pressure in the big leagues like that but he kept at it when I myself wasn’t sure he was good enough.
1 Go to commentsAwesome story. I wonder what a bigger American (SA) scene might have mean for Brex.
1 Go to comments“Johnny McNicholl and the Crusaders” save a Penney. Who has been in camp this week and showed them how to play?
8 Go to commentsSo, reports of the Crusaders’ demise / terminal decline are perhaps just - slightly - premature/exaggerated…? 🤔 Will we see a deep-dive into that by the estimable Rugbypass scribes, and maybe one or two mea culpas? Thought not.
8 Go to comments1. The Chiefs are rudderless without DMac, which enhances his AB chances 2. Chiefs pack are powderpuffs. The hard men arent there anymore 3. They had their golden title chance last yr and wont threaten this yr. Gone in second round of playoffs.
8 Go to commentsHonestly, why did you have to publish such a foolish article the day they play us? 😂
45 Go to comments> They are not standalone entities. They are linked to an amateur association which holds the FFR licence that allows the professional side to compete in the league. That’s a great rule. This looks like the chicken or egg professional scenario. How long is it going to be before the club can break even (if that is even a thing in French rugby)? If the locals aren’t into well it would be good to se them drop to amateur level (is it that far?). Hope they can reset from this level and be more practical, there will be a time when they can rebuild (if France has there setup right).
1 Go to commentsWhat about changing the ball? To something heavier and more pointed that bounces unpredictably. Not this almost round football used these days.
35 Go to comments