Reports claim some men are raping their daughters to guarantee bumper harvests in Mbire District, Mashonaland Central province.
Incestuous relationships are said to be rife in the remote district as chiefs’ courts have to deal with a lot of cases of rape which involve men and their daughters. Young pregnant girls are reportedly turning up at health facilities in droves.
Fadzisai Mawunganidze of local Non-government organisation, Sistahood said:
Ward 2 has the most reported cases of incest involving fathers and their daughters. And according to some of the victims, they are being forced to be intimate with their fathers.
Some of the girls fall pregnant and that is when the crime is revealed, but because they are cut off from clinics and police posts it becomes difficult to report.
… We also highlight the importance of accessing health services such as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) and emergency contraceptive methods when there are such cases.
PEP involves the taking of antiretroviral medicines to prevent infection with HIV within 72 hours of exposure.
Overall, reports indicate that rape cases in Zimbabwe have surged over the years. In 2018 a report by the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency revealed that 7 394 cases had been reported in the first quarter of 2017.
Meanwhile, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), through a Twitter post last week, warned female vendors and those commuting at night to be wary of rapists who were posing as prospective customers or commuters…newsday
