My feminist and maternal hackles rose when I read on Breitbart News that: "A Nigerian court will pursue the death penalty against 14-year-old Wasilat Tasi'u for allegedly murdering her 35-year-old husband, Umar Sani. The case caught the attention of activists around the world concerned about child brides and forced marriages".
The very parents who forced their child into this marriage, are now pleading for clemency. Some parents realize how hideous such customs are only when their children's lives are at stake. But more bizarrely, the majority of parents from certain regions actually support such punishments, however cruel, should their daughters resist customs, they consider sacred.
One should never rejoice in someone taking the life of another, regardless of how vile that person is. So, the inclination towards revenge is almost natural when the inner sanctum of a young girl of 14 is violated. When a child bride poisons her husband because she feels she cannot "take it" any longer, one almost rejoices.
But the law is designed precisely to help us fight our natural instincts for revenge in situations where such ‘crimes' occur. To my shame I could not help but admit to a mixture of gloating and sadness at Wasilat's courage to get out of what I consider to be a grossly inhumane situation, no matter the cost.
So driven was she, that she put rat poison in her husband's food showing how enraged she was at having to share her pubescent body and life with someone more than twice her age. Unlike some progressive cultures where you marry the one you love; she had to love the one she married.
Increasingly, young girls are going to rebel against a system that denies them a sense of agency and reduces them to sexual slavery. Although Nigeria passed the Child Rights Act in 2003 increasing marital age to 18 for girls, this Act has done very little for girls in Northern Nigeria where child marriages are common.
It proves that legal measures are often more difficult to enforce where cultural practices are deeply entrenched. In such instances, Parliament should enforce the law and use non-government agencies to help them educate the public and rural communities, in particular, about why these laws have been formulated and why they need to be enforced.
That is why the bestowal of the Nobel Peace Prize, on Malala Yousafza, aged 17, is so timely. It focuses the world's attention on corners of the world where girls are excluded from their civil rights to freedom, to dignity, to equality and even the right to life.
The world had better wake up to a new dispensation where the most unlikely people will emerge to assert their rights over patriarchies of various forms existing all over the globe.
The United Nation's Millennium Development Goals have already eluded us because those in high places in the UN are the worst patriarchs under the sun. The era is fast approaching when young women are going to find ways, however crooked, to emancipate themselves.
This is the story of the suffragists of Great Britain, the ANC Women's League, feminists from Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America. These activists subverted the state in order to achieve state power.
For as long as international agencies and national governments betray the girl child and women in general, these subjugated constituencies will find their freedom in even illegal ways. This brings to the fore the polemical question of legality versus legitimacy. Adopting laws due to international pressure is just a first step.
Enforcing them and educating the public why they are necessary requires much more effort. The question is - do patriarchal leaders have the political will to do so - given the recent comments by Turkey's President Erdogan?
This article first appeared in Die Burger.
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
