You would be excused to think we are in the Dark Ages, but in reality that is probably where we are at.

You only have to observe the obstinacy of destructive age-old traditions and harmful practices that persist despite all the best efforts by some members of our society to end them. They say old habits die hard, and ours do seem to die hard with a vengeance.

A little girl of 14 in one corner of this country was about to sit her Grade Seven exams when her father decided she was going to be given away in marriage to a young man who had been at the same school as her.

Manister — that’s her name — resisted, and, luckily, she got support, and a court thwarted the intended matrimonial arrangement.

Apparently, the girl’s father had been persuaded to sell off his daughter for a bride price of 15 heads of cattle, admittedly a prince’s ransom in our poverty-stricken milieu where to earn enough money to collect such a size of herd could take an entire lifetime. But Manister was not amused, and she eventually won.

Now we are told the girl has sat her exams, though she had to go through the ordeal of doing so under police escort and under the supervision of a government social welfare officer. I’ll be personally interested to know how she fared in these exams and if she is going to secondary level, which would be just as well.

This piece of bittersweet news broke at the same time as an international conference was taking place in Zambia in which it was stated that a full one-third of African girls are betrothed and married off by their parents before they reach the age of 18.

The lure is usually the same as in Manister’s case, or even much less. For instance, a woman interviewed by the BBC on the margins of the meeting in Zambia said that her bride price had not been more than a paltry $30. Her father had thought that her early marriage — it should be considered statutory rape — would ease his family’s financial woes, but the woman says what she underwent was pure hell.

What these girls have to endure goes beyond the denial of an education that should offer life choices for all young people: It is that and much more.

It forces young girls into the arms of people they may never want to go near if they had a choice, and who may choose to use or abuse them in any number of ways, physically and psychologically.

In her young age, the bride is an object of sexual gratification and a site for reproduction, churning out baby after baby till the machine is exhausted. After that, the baby-making factory goes dormant and irrelevant as a new one is acquired to continue with the work.

These girls may have reached puberty but that does not mean they are ready for motherhood. For them pregnancy becomes, literally, an STD (sexually transmitted disease). In the end, the antipathy the thus abused girl harbours toward her father may be projected toward her own (unwanted) children, it being a given that she surely hates her loathsome rapist husband already.

Reports that the African Union is looking into ways to banish this form of sexual slavery are most welcome and should be lent our wholehearted support.

No woman should be forced into marriage before she attains the age of majority, which should, strictly be 18. Which is not the same thing as saying that after that age has been reached it is okay for women to be forced into marriage. Free choice should always be the norm, for men as well as for women.

Free choice in marriage makes for happy wedlock, and this in turn makes for happy motherhood, while happy motherhood makes for happy children and happy children make for happy societies.

I hope one day Manister will earn her masters’ degree, and that in the fullness of time Manister will be a minister in Tanzania.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: [email protected]