*HON. MUDARIKWA: Thank you Mr. Speaker Sir for giving me the opportunity to make my contribution on this motion raised by Hon. Gonese. This is a very constructive motion because we believe when we talk of Zimbabwe; we are talking of the people of Zimbabwe, including women. Women are very important in the development of Zimbabwe. It is a shame if you have the young girls as mothers because they are not yet mature. When you are developing your country, there are some steps which have to be taken towards inculcating the values of responsibility in young children. What has been happening in other countries is that we need to develop vocational training centres. These should be in every district, if not every province so that the youngsters can go and acquire some life skills such as construction, carpentry, farming, knitting, sewing, agriculture and so forth. This means this youngster has benefitted through these trainings because we have a situation whereby these days, if you were to ask the boys and girls about their career development, they will say I will take any job which may come across my way because they lack guidance. I am therefore pleading with the Ministry of Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment that is has to have some ideas to develop these youngsters.
Mr. Speaker Sir, I remember, when we were youngsters, there were clubs which were called the Young Farmers’ Clubs, which taught us about animal husbandry including castration of bulls. We also have clubs at the churches. These are responsible for bringing an upright youth, which I think we need to develop. As a result, as Parliament, we need to work hard and ask the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development to inject more money in the rural areas so that we fight poverty.
Some of these cultural practices which we are still clinging on to are caused by poverty within families. As a result, this leads to the early marriages of the young men and women. We have people who will be moving around, seeking assistance, wherever they will be going and even taking off their clothes. I am saying as Members let us persuade the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, the Treasury to pour money into the development of rural areas. One of the ways of doing it is creating a fund which will give loans to farmers with very low interest. We know we are suffering from climate change, such as the effects of the El Nino; we need to have ways and means of fighting this climate change. This will require us to utilise the little rains we have and we also need to work with other organisations which are coming to this country.
Mr. Speaker Sir, we need to fight against some of these cultural practices which are being introduced into the country by these non-governmental organisations. They are promoting lesbians and gays; they are promoting homosexuality. If we have two people marrying, we are deviating from our culture because if you marry another man, can you really take that partner to your rural area and introduce to your parents and the aunts and say this is my boyfriend, referring to this a other man? In our culture, we say this is taboo and this is destroying our youngsters because they are exposed to such cultures and sins, especially in the media and even from the videos which they watch, seeing a man kissing another man or a woman kissing another woman. This is taboo, this should be stopped and we need to punish these people who indulge in such satanic activities.
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