A traditional leader in Mazowe district, Chief Makope has raised concern over the rise in cases of incest in his area saying this could be a factor behind successive droughts Zimbabwe has been recording in recent years.
Speaking to 263Chat recently, Chief Makope highlighted that sexual relationships between relatives had become the order of the day.
“My royal court has been dealing with cases of incest in recent times. I have to intervene where relatives have been in sexual relationships which, in most cases, have resulted in the birth of children.
“This trend seems to have increased in the past few years and even though we have fines for perpetrators, it seems they are not deterrent enough,” he said.
Chief Makope said children sired from incestuous relationship are considered abnormal with pregnancies from such unholy unions having to be terminated as the child is considered “unclean”.
He added that such children can be born with deformities, can grow to become homosexual, may have a low intelligence quotient (IQ) and a potential to mentally harm future offspring.
“The result of an incest relationship is a child who is a burden to the community. It is taboo and that child must not be allowed to live because he or she will be lacking identity. You find that in most cases, the child will be deformed as the ancestral spirits would not be happy.
“So sometimes a ritual is performed to break such relationships,” he noted.
According to Chief Makope in the last year, his court has received more than 10 cases of incest marriages.
He attributed this rise in incestuous relationships to westernization where people are copying foreign cultures dumping traditional practices.
“Our society now lacks community leaders or the Sekurus and Tetes who, in years gone by, would be there to teach children on culture. The absence of these key figures has seen a lot of misdemeanors happening. It’s very unfortunate that because of work, we no longer have people who commit their time to teach children on some norms which they are to follow,” he noted.
In Zimbabwe, incest relationships, just like gays and lesbian relationships are considered a serious social problem.
