Child bride ‘rescued’ from husband in Vaal Triangle

The Gauteng Department of Social development has removed a 17-year-old from a 42-year-old man home in Debonair Park in the Vaal Triangle after he paid R25‚000 lobola to her parents and married her.

Social workers for the department said the child was happy but was not attending school.

"The child was found to be in a good mental state‚ emotionally sound and clean. Social workers noted that the child expressed an intention to continue to stay with the traditional healer and that she was happy with this arranged union. The Department suspects that the child who turns 18 years in a month’s time is indeed likely to go back to this man."

He said he was led to believe she was 18. She was removed last week.

The department said in a statement: "Plans are afoot to ensure that the child is assisted to continue with her schooling."

But despite the child's removal‚ the Marriages Act and the Customary Marriages Act do not specify a minimum age for marriage‚ explained Sebastian Mansfield-Barry‚ spokesman at The Centre for Child Law. These acts do not ask for the child's consent to allow the marriage or allow the child to refuse a union ‚ he said. The parents’ consent is needed for a minor.

In the case of the Customary Marriages Act‚ the Minister of Home Affairs is supposed to authorise marriages of boys aged 14 - 17 and girls aged 12 - 17.

However‚ treaties that South Africa has signed such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child expect the child to be 18.

This means our law is contradictory on a minimum age for a child to marry but international law dictates a minimum age of 18‚ said Mansfield-Barry. But the Gauteng Department of Social Development said: "As a caring government‚ we go beyond the legislative imperatives to deliver on this mandate because we are keenly aware that‚ as Oliver Tambo would put it: ‘The children of any nation are its future.

A country‚ a movement‚ a person that does not value its youth and children does not deserve its future’.”