{"id":206996,"date":"2025-09-13T06:32:05","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T04:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/zimbabwe\/zimbabwe-not-in-our-village-shamva-chiefs-take-a-stand-against-child-marriage\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T06:32:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T04:32:05","slug":"zimbabwe-not-in-our-village-shamva-chiefs-take-a-stand-against-child-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/zimbabwe\/zimbabwe-not-in-our-village-shamva-chiefs-take-a-stand-against-child-marriage\/","title":{"rendered":"Zimbabwe: &#8216;Not in Our Village&#8217; &#8211; Shamva Chiefs Take a Stand Against Child Marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"51\">Some girls wore proper football boots. Others played in sneakers. A few ran barefoot across the dusty pitch of <em>Madziwa Teachers&#8217; College<\/em> in Shamva. But on that day, it didn&#8217;t matter what they were wearing. What mattered was the message they were sending: <em>child marriages have no place in their communities<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"36\">As the whistle blew, the girls charged forward, their energy, their laughter, and their determination louder than the stigma that had long shadowed their lives. Each kick of the ball was a small&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202509120448.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa <a title=\"Zimbabwe\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/southern-africa\/zimbabwe\/\">Zimbabwe<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some girls wore proper football boots. Others played in sneakers. A few ran barefoot across the dusty pitch of Madziwa Teachers&#8217; College in Shamva. But on that day, it didn&#8217;t matter what they were wearing. What mattered was the message they were sending: child marriages have no place in their communities. As the whistle blew, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":188473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[248],"tags":[258,256,7493,8438,9795,257,25315,254,12397,10217,4686,421],"class_list":["post-206996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-zimbabwe","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-chiefs","tag-child","tag-marriage","tag-news","tag-shamva","tag-south-africa-today","tag-stand","tag-village","tag-zimbabwe","tag-zimbabwe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}