Meet Dyness, a bright-eyed girl from a small village in Zambia. Dyness loved school and dreamed of becoming a nurse one day. But her dreams were shattered when her parents arranged her marriage to a man three times her age.
At just 14 years old, Dyness became a child bride. Forced to drop out of school, she exchanged her textbooks for household chores and the responsibilities of a wife. Her days were no longer filled with laughter and learning but with endless cooking, cleaning, and catering to her husband’s needs.
Dyness’ youthful innocence quickly faded as she endured the harsh realities of marriage. Her husband, uneducated and unemployed, struggled to provide for their family. With no access to contraceptives or reproductive health education, Dyness soon found herself pregnant, facing the dangers of childbirth at such a tender age.
As the years passed, Dyness watched her dreams slip further away. She longed to return to school to pursue her passion for nursing, but the weight of societal expectations and economic hardship kept her trapped in a cycle of poverty and despair.
Despite the challenges she faced, Dyness remained resilient, holding onto the flicker of hope that one day she would break free from the chains of child marriage and reclaim her future—or maybe not.
What is Dyness’ fate as well as that of several other child marriage victims in Zambia?
The article below by Hanibal Goitom sheds more light on the amendment to the Marriage Act, which outlaws child marriage:
New legal framework in place…
On 22 December 2023, Zambia enacted an amendment (Amendment Act) to the 1918 Marriage Act that raised the minimum marriage age to 18 for all marriages, including those concluded under customary law. The Amendment Act adopts the Zambian Constitution’s definition of the term “child” as “a person who has attained, or is below, the age of eighteen years.”
The Amendment Act repealed section 33 of the Marriage Act, which permitted marriage of children, including children under the age of 15, and replaced it with language that renders any marriage void if one or both parties to it is a child. Significantly, it extended this restriction to marriages concluded under customary rites, which before its enactment did not impose a marriageable age limit.
Background to the Amendment Act
A dual system of statutory and customary laws governs matters of personal status in Zambia. Statutory law (the 1918 Marriage Act) set the minimum marriage age at 21. However, the act permitted persons between the ages of 16 and 21 to get married with parental consent.
While it made marriage arrangements in which one of the parties is under the age of 16 void, it allowed persons under the age of 16 to get married with the consent of a High Court judge when the judge is “satisfied that in the particular circumstances of the case, it is not contrary to the public interest.”
Notably, none of the restrictions applied to persons governed under customary law, and no statutory age restrictions existed for marriages concluded under customary rites.
Under the country’s Penal Code, as amended in 2005, sexual intercourse with a child under the age of 16 constitutes statutory rape and a felony:
- Any person who unlawfully and carnally knows any child commits a felony and is liable, upon conviction, to a term of imprisonment of not less than fifteen years and may be liable to imprisonment for life.
- Any person who attempts to have unlawful carnal knowledge of any child commits a felony and is liable, upon conviction, to imprisonment for a term of not less than fourteen years and not exceeding twenty years.
- Any person who prescribes the defilement of a child as a cure for an ailment commits a felony and is liable, upon conviction, to imprisonment for a term of not less than fifteen years and may be liable to imprisonment for life.
- A child above the age of twelve years who commits an offence under subsection (1) or (2) is liable, to such community service or counselling as the court may determine, in the best interests of both children.
However, this did not apply to instances of defilement in the context of child marriage under customary rites. In a 1949 decision, the High Court of Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) held that “[i]t is not unlawful for a man to have carnal knowledge of a girl to whom he is lawfully married, despite the fact that the girl is under sixteen years of age.” (Rex v. Chinjamba (1949) 5 N.R.L.R 384.) This case appears to be a good law to date.
The outlawing of child marriage under customary rites through the amendment act means that statutory rape committed under the guise of customary marriage now constitutes a crime.
Child marriage is a highly entrenched practice in Zambia. According to a 2020 UNFPA-UNICEF report, “Zambia is home to 1.7 million child brides. Of these, 400,000 were married before age 15.
The practice has become less common in the past decades, with 29 per cent of all young women aged 20–24 married before 18 years old, and 5 per cent before turning 15, in 2018, compared with 46 and 10 per cent, respectively, in 1993.”
Several factors are said to drive this practice, including poverty, traditional practices and beliefs, tolerance or acceptance of polygyny, and lack of access to education.
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