Regai Dzive Shiri: Early Girl-Child Marriage, Human Trafficking, and Erasure to Development in Masvingo Province

The phenomenon of child marriages is a form of gender-based violence still prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa. This chapter interrogates early girl-child marriages as forms of human trafficking among Shona communities in Chivi and Masvingo districts in Masvingo Province, Zimbabwe. The study posits that girls are not brides as evoked in the proverbial plea, regai dzive shiri, mazai haana muto (let the bird’s eggs hatch, the eggs themselves do not amount to much relish/soup). It is further argued that without drastic measures to restrain the girl-child marriage practices, the achievement of some Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, and 16, would remain a pipe dream for many children. This qualitative research was informed by a human rights-based approach theoretical framework and used a desk review of secondary data of existing literature on child marriage practices, documentary analysis, in-depth interviews, and observation to collect data. The research established that there are diverse causes and effects of girl-child marriages, which are detrimental to the human rights of the ‘girl brides’ being used as pawns in a game. The study concludes that early girl-child marriages in Chivi and Masvingo districts are forms of human trafficking because they encompass the transfer and receipt of persons as well as receiving of payments or benefits by parents using the human chattel of ‘girl brides’. This makes regai dzive shiri and ‘human trafficking’ apt metaphors for the heinous practice of early girl-child marriages, which continue to kill the geese that lay the golden eggs and erases the prospects for a bright future and socio-economic development of twenty-first-century Zimbabwe.