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Wives
playing seductress for food
IRIN News
July 30, 2008
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=79529
Dereck Gurupira, 50,
was bathing in the river near his home in Zimbabwe's Manicaland
Province late one afternoon when he saw a woman on the opposite
bank begin to undress, apparently oblivious of his presence.
Usually the women in
Manicaland's Odzi district, about 55km northwest of the border town
of Mutare, wash downstream in a more secluded part of the river,
but after undressing completely the woman greeted him by name and
then suggested to Gurupira that he should join her.
He went and sat near
her as she bathed in the river and was taken by surprise when a
man wielding an axe emerged from the bush and accused Gurupira of
having a sexual relationship with his wife. The matter was taken
to the traditional court, where Gurupira was fined two cows and
a goat for the "illicit relationship", to which the woman
even confessed.
"I was a fool to
fall into the trap. The shameless husband used his wife as bait
to extort the livestock from me, and even though I hardly knew the
woman, many people now think I had a love affair with her,"
Gurupira told IRIN.
Having to forfeit the
cattle means that he will not have enough draught power to prepare
his land for the agricultural season beginning in September, although
he may find solace in the fact that he is not the only person to
have fallen for the scam.
Imbayago Chikuni, a messenger
for one of the local headmen, told IRIN that the number of cases
brought before the traditional courts by husbands alleging infidelity
by their wives was increasing.
Cases
of alleged infidelity rising
"In
the past, I used to bring at most one case of infidelity a year
to my headman's court, but I am now dealing with several such trials
a month. It is difficult to tell between a genuine case and a staged
one because, in all cases, the women are found in compromising positions
by their husbands or the husbands' relatives," Chikuni said.
Those being targeted
are villagers considered to have means, and while the river was
one location often used for the ruse, women were also frequenting
shebeens [informal taverns] to lure unsuspecting men into their
schemes, he said.
Hunger was forcing people
"to use bizarre ways to get any form of foodstuffs or money"
from "offending" men. "In this part of the province
we hardly harvested anything, since the rains were erratic, there
was no fertiliser and humanitarian aid is not forthcoming. Those
who can manage a full meal of sadza [thick maize-meal porridge]
and boiled vegetables a day are considered lucky," Chikuni
said.
In June, the Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP)
said about 2 million Zimbabweans would be facing hunger before September,
increasing to 3.8 million by the end of the year, and to 5.1 million
by March 2009.
Zimbabwe's precarious
food security was exacerbated by a government order banning humanitarian
organisations from operating, including those supplementing food
stocks in rural areas, on allegations of engaging in political activity.
Most of the
villagers in the district depend on gathering wild fruits and roots
for food, while others illegally pan for gold and diamonds in the
hope of supplementing their income.
Zimbabwe's
hard times, in which annual inflation is officially estimated at
2.2 million percent, is also seeing daughters being married for
dowries at very young ages.
In a bid to avert hunger,
the parents of Yevai Dongo, 15, in the Muzarabani district of Mashonaland
Province, consented to their daughter becoming the third wife of
a 50-year-old local shop owner. Yevai's 17-year-old sister ran away
to Mozambique to avoid a similar fate.
In search
of dowries
The
Dongo family now boasts six head of cattle, whereas they had none
before, and are given a constant supply of maize-meal by their new
son-in-law, who also gave them a cash "windfall" of one
trillion dollars (about US$8) when he married their daughter two
months ago.
"True, my family
is poor and there are times when we went without food," Yevai
told IRIN. "But I was still going to school, and for my parents
to sell me off like a commodity is unfair to me because they used
an old fashioned practice to solve the problem that we were facing,
while I will be confined to a home that I don't enjoy."
She is concerned that
joining a polygamous family might expose her to HIV/AIDS, and "most
of the time when I am alone in bed, I seriously consider following
my sister, who refused to be imprisoned."
Yevai told IRIN that
girls of her age in the community were being forced by their parents
to enter into love relationships with older men, and then faking
pregnancy so the men would be compelled to marry them.
"Even when the men
insist that they used a condom, no-one listens to them and, again,
that is not fair, because young girls unwillingly lose their virginity
and expose themselves to sexually transmitted diseases," Yevai
said.
Erich Bloch, a Bulawayo-based
economic consultant, said unusual methods were being employed to
beat hunger because of the "sheer desperation and the widening
poverty cycle set off by the current economic meltdown."
"When people are
starving, when children cry all night long because of hunger and
parents have nothing to give them, you see an acute decrease in
moral standards," Bloch told IRIN.
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