Father charged with selling daughter

File photo

File photo

Published Jun 15, 2015

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Durban - The father of a 14-year-old girl has been charged with being an accomplice to her abduction and marrying her off to a man 12 years her senior - for 15 sheep.

The man responsible for the ukuthwala has also been charged with rape and abduction.

Police spokesman Major Thulani Zwane said the pair, who appeared in the Hammarsdale Magistrate’s Court on Thursday, were arrested by the Pinetown Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit two days earlier.

The teenager had called Hammarsdale police after her 26-year-old captor allegedly beat her for escaping to a neighbour’s house on May 7.

She claimed she had been abducted from her home in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape, in January.

Zwane said the teen had been forced into a minibus by unknown men and driven to a house where she was shown “her husband”.

She was allegedly raped and 15 sheep were sent to her family thereafter.

“The young girl contacted her parents and asked what was going on, informing them she did not like what this man was doing to her. The parents informed her that she was at her new home and that the man she was with would take care of her,” Zwane said.

The man returned to Durban, where he worked, leaving her at his Eastern Cape homestead.

Meanwhile, she relentlessly called her parents for help. Her mother then decided to take her daughter to Durban on May 2, saying the teenager should face her “husband” and tell him she was unhappy herself.

But, on arrival, the mother deserted the teenager. “Realising that her mother had abandoned her, things went from bad to worse as the young girl made it clear to the man that she did not want to be married to him. The ‘husband’, though, was adamant that he had paid for her so she must perform her wifely duties,” Zwane said.

The girl was “rescued” by a neighbour but her “husband” found her and beat her.

He and the teenager’s 39-year-old father were arrested in Hammarsdale.

Both men have homesteads in the Eastern Cape, but knew each other from Hammarsdale where they lived to be close to work, said Zwane.

Professor Lebo Moletsane, the JL (John Langalibalele) Dube Chair in Rural Education at UKZN, said the mother should have been arrested as well.

She said women were often the “raging enforcers” of so-called cultural values even if they were oppressed by them.

“We have to understand the mother’s actions in the context of the patriarchal system in which we live and how that frames the view of girl children in families, communities and society. I hate to use poverty as an excuse but that’s one of the reasons people sacrifice their children.

“There are 15 head of sheep in a household where there weren’t before. From her perspective, she sees that the so-called husband can afford this lobola, meaning he can afford to take good care of her daughter, never mind the cruelty and pain of being taken against her will.”

Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs spokesman, Msawakhe Mayisela, said there was no justifying a parent “selling” a child, no matter how hungry they were. “MEC Nomusa Dube-Ncube has been at the forefront of the fight against this practice, which deprives children of a normal life and hinders their development.”

Mayisela said the department had done outreach in areas prone to ukuthwala and engaged with traditional leaders. The practice was illegal, he said.

He said there was no excuse for anyone purporting to be practising their culture while violating another person, especially young women, who were among the most vulnerable members of society.

Moletsane echoed this, saying the case was a clear indication that much needed to be done to educate communities, especially women, around this practice, which uprooted children “like objects being purchased at a supermarket”.

“Like many things done now in the name of culture, this is an abuse and misinterpretation of the original intent of the practice.

“We need to really talk, as a country, about where such a practice fits in the context of constitutional democracy and justice.”

Mayisela said the MEC condemned ukuthwala, calling on the law to “aggressively take its course” against the perpetrators.

The teenager is now being cared for in a place of safety.

Her father and captor were remanded in custody until their next court appearance on June 22.

Daily News

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