Durban - The parents of a 14-year-old girl accused of marrying her off to an older man for 15 sheep have been granted bail.
The mother testified on Thursday that her daughter had left voluntarily to meet her husband-to-be and had ignored a call to come home and return to school.
Her mother was arrested last Friday and charged with sexual exploitation of a child and human trafficking for sexual purposes. Her name is known to the Daily News, but cannot be revealed to protect the identity of her daughter, who is in a place of safety.
In the dock in the Hammarsdale Magistrate’s Court on Thursday, the mother joined her husband and the 26-year-old man accused of kidnapping and raping their daughter, and his brother.
Taking the stand to give testimony in her bail application, the 36-year-old mother denied there had been a forced marriage arranged by the girl’s parents without her consent.
She told the court she intended to plead not guilty to the charges because her daughter had not been taken forcibly, but instead had left her Eastern Cape home voluntarily to meet her husband-to-be.
The teenager had phoned her mother to tell her she was at the man’s homestead in a nearby village and wanted to marry him.
“I asked her to come back and return to school, but she refused. I phoned her father to talk to her.”
At the time, the mother was at their home in the Eastern Cape while her husband was at his workplace in Durban where he lived. The girl’s “husband” also lives and works at the same place.
The court heard that the mother had received news that a delegation would visit to negotiate lobola for the girl. She informed her husband who organised elders from his family to meet them.
Once concluded, the lobola of 15 sheep was presented to them and their daughter was considered married.
The daughter visited her mother twice before phoning to tell her that her husband wanted her to come to Durban, but did not know when she would go.
The mother testified that she had not seen her daughter for about a month, when they met by chance in Mthatha. The girl was on her way to Durban. The daughter said she would ask the taxi driver to drop her where her husband had directed her to.
The mother and daughter travelled to Durban, then Pinetown and then to his place of work, where mother and “son-in-law” met for the first time, she told the court.
“Her (daughter’s) husband was phoning her along the way. There was nothing strange or out of the ordinary with her,” said the mother when asked if she noticed anything “untoward”.
However, she said she had not expected her daughter to want to get married but said it was common for girls her age to do so.
The women said their goodbyes and went off to their husbands.
“She would visit me where I was living with her father,” the mother said.
Reviewing testimony given by the girl’s “husband” when he started his bail application earlier this week, Magistrate, Zimasile Tikilili, said the man had testified that he married the girl after he had proposed to her and she had agreed.
The man said he had taken her physical maturity into consideration and deemed her fit to marry, not bothering to consider or even ask how old she was.
The man denied taking her forcibly by arrangement with her father, saying the girl had agreed and only reported her whereabouts to her mother the next day to allow the man time to inform his elders.
The girl had been at liberty to approach the police because she had free movement in the Eastern Cape and in KwaZulu-Natal, the court heard.
The man also denied raping her, but admitted assaulting her after he had told the girl not to associate with an unmarried neighbour, who eventually raised the alarm, leading to the arrest of the man and the girl’s father last month.
Retelling the father’s testimony, Tikilili said the father’s version had been corroborated by that of the mother.
The father had told the court that he had not taken the matter further because he felt it would be abusive of him not to allow his daughter to get married because she had told them it was what she wanted.
He denied having “sold her off” because he no longer wanted to take care of her, saying he had cared for her since she was born.
He and his daughter’s “husband” were granted bail of R1 500 while his wife and the man’s brother were given bail of R500.
The trial continues.
Daily News