Maputo, 22 Nov (AIM) – Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on Tuesday dismissed the Secretary of State for Manica province, Stefan Dick Kassotche.
As is usual with government appointments and dismissals, the presidential dispatch announcing the removal of Kassotche gave no reason for the change.
But there can be little doubt that Kassotche was fired because of his open opposition to the government’s fight to end the practice of child marriage.
At a public meeting in the town of Gondola last week, on the development of girls and the need to retain them at school, Kassotche called for a rethink of the legislation outlawing child marriage – legislation intended to protect girls, and allow them to remain at school as long as possible, instead of being married off to much older men.
“There are children aged 10 who have the body of a 23-year-old mother”, Kassotche said. He then asked, suggesting that motherhood at a young age was normal: “When Mary became pregnant with Jesus, how old was she?”
(The answer to this rhetorical question is that neither Kassotche nor anybody else knows. Mary may be a key figure in Catholic myth, but the New Testament, the only source for her life, says nothing about her age).
These remarks by Kassotche infuriated civil society organisations fighting for the rights of women and children, represented by the Civil Society Forum for Children’s Rights.
“By making such statements, we interpret that the Secretary of State is calling into question national and international achievements and progress made by the State and Government of Mozambique, as well as by civil society and the entire Mozambican people,” the NGOs said.
They claimed that the speech by Kassotche “violates the assumptions and rights enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic, the Family Law, the Law on Preventing and Combating Child Marriage and the other legal instruments that protect and defend the rights of children.”
They accused Kassotche of shirking his responsibility as a government official to enforce the legal framework and in particular article 23 of the Law on Child Marriage of 2019, which establishes that “it is up to the government to promote programmes and opportunities aimed at encouraging and retaining children in school and measures of positive discrimination towards girls with a view to broadening educational opportunities.”
The NGOs demanded that Kassotche publicly apologise, and that Nyusi should promptly sack him.
As the new Secretary of State for Manica, Nyusi has appointed Fernando Bemane de Sousa, who was previously Deputy Minister of Land and Environment.
(AIM)
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