REAWAKENING THE MYSTERY OF MATRIMONY: A FIGHT AGAINST THE PREVALENT “NTHENGWA ZA KUTHULIRA”
By Father Erick Nyondo
Most often than not a feeling of ennui thuds in my heart. I try to weave a stretch of sense within the appalling crisis of marriage and customs that force girl children into marriage. One may be forced to ask: Is marriage anything of value? Is it honorable to force persons into marriage?
Marriage has been considered since the inception of man-kind as the most fundamental and basic social unit that is the heart of every society. It is a universal institution and indeed an essential institution. In the renowned statement of Lord Penzance, marriage is defined as “the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others.”
This definition of marriage has fundamental and practical implications in that marriage must be voluntary, heterosexual, monogamous and indissoluble (perpetual partnership). The ecclesiastical and biblical law focuses on “one fleshiness” in an effort to reiterate the nobility and supernatural character of marriage in establishing the dynamic union between one man and one woman.
A wake to the reality of “kuthula” feels greatly heinous and abhorrent in a face of essential understanding of marriage that is hinged on voluntariness and indissolubility. It is thus a trifling reality that dilutes the dignity of marriage and its core purpose. It saddens me that in an era in which persons are largely Christianized, intellectually illuminated and are aware of their constitutional rights would yet pave way to “nthengwa za kuthula”.
“Nthengwa za kuthula” entail a practice where a girl found pregnant is taken by her relatives to the boy’s family to force them into a marriage. The worst form of the same is where a girl who is found conversing with a boy in a questionable or secret place would be forced to marry the boy under the presumption that they are in a sexual relationship. Sadly, a number of these marriages take a form of child marriages that are constitutionally prohibited and ecclesiastically frowned upon.
Lord Pearce J in exalting the necessity of capacity to marry observed that “According to modern thought it is considered socially and morally wrong that persons of an age, at which we now believe them to be immature and provide for their education, should have the stresses, responsibilities and sexual freedom of marriage and the physical strain of childbirth. Child marriages by common consent are bad for the participants and bad for the institution of marriage”.
The most perilous aspect of “nthengwa za kuthula” is that they violate the requirement of consent to marriage. Consent forms a basic cornerstone of marriage. It is a springboard of self-giving of one spouse to the other in the axiomatic and most sacred words “till death do us part”. In fact, consent is considered as a fundamental human right. It is a constitutional right and a divine right. A marriage without consent is a forced marriage and is an affront to the human law and the divine design of marriage. Consequently, nthengwa za kuthula are a violation of the right to free choice of most girls and a violation of the sanctity of women.
It is thus a paramount duty for the church which is a fundamental instrument of liberation to launch a renewed understanding of marriage within the cultural and traditional spaces in which “nthengwa za kuthula” have become part of the social-cultural habits. Christ constituted the sacrament of marriage as a sacrament tied more essentially on the right of choice and free will. The phrase “the two shall leave their parents and become one”, though with divers interpretation, relishes the most sublime and subtle aspect of a decisional choice of one’s spouse and mutual bonding of two souls.
Mutual partnership and indissolubility which are sacred incidents of marriage can and may never sprout out of a forced relationship. In “nthengwa za kuthula”, the partners are deprived of the freedom either to marry or to remain single, or to choose their spouse. It is usually evident in nthengwa za kuthula that a girl succumbs to pressures to marry and all types of intimidation from the relations which might be psychological, emotional and even physical. It is to the same breadth that something long-lasting and sacred may not be borne out of force and intimidation. Marriages by kuthula, are a mockery to the sanctity and essential character of marriage which within the circles of the church is touted with sacramentality.
The church must exhibit an overarching and cardinal commitment to re-evangelize its Christians to hold in esteem and think highly of marriage beyond the cultural and traditional meanings. It would be unbelievable and a decline of ministerial duty to entertain “nthengwa za kuthula” within the parochial circumscription. It is a pertinent and more urgent duty of church ministers to overhaul the status of sacramental marriages and give it a meaningful and dignified destiny amidst its crisis and the prevalence of “kuthula”.