The government of Zanzibar has made it clear that it is keen on reviewing some sections in the conventional laws, Kadhi decrees and national policies that seem to suppress or compromise the rights of women and children.
The objective is to ensure that all pieces of legislation that seem to undermine the human rights that should be enjoyed by women and children are righted in a quest to make Zanzibar a safer place for them. This, indeed, is a wonderful idea.
The contention is that some laws and policies appear to prohibit or frustrate the search for justice and property rights for women and children. The effort in this direction, which is already underway, also envisages making it compulsory for all marriages to be registered.
The upshot here is to safeguard the rights of women and children in case a spouse (the husband in this case) dies. Many women (who have lost their husbands) are, invariably, abused ruthless at this time, the canker being the absence of established legal rights. Zanzibar, nevertheless, is not the only place where woman complains bitterly about the abuse or outright absence of legislation that should safeguard their rights as humans.
Other complainants are on the Mainland. Women in rural Tanzania told the Constitutional Review Commission a few years ago that the envisaged Constitution should have provisions that protect them from societal cruelty, especially the callousness that emanates from husbands.
The women complain, nearly in each region, that their husbands often batter them and subject them to untold suffering. Over and above this social misdemeanour, it is these same women who slog it out in family farms to make ends meet while their men laze around.
One of the most painful parts of being a woman in this country, the complainants say, is the fear and vulnerability to violence. Wife battering is a major public health problem in this country.
But the legal curbs do not take it seriously enough. In fact, any act of gender-based violence that results in physical, sexual or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty should be rated as a punishable criminal offence.
This atrocity is unacceptable and horrendous. Some wives are arbitrarily beaten in their homes by their husbands, many of whom act under the influence of alcohol. This too is a felony that should be punished by law.
A different survey has shown that gender based violence is escalating with pronounced cases occurring in Kagera, Mara, Mwanza and Kigoma. In most cases it is the wives who fall victim to the rage of their husbands, especially when they fail to control their emotions.