Durban — Lecturer Jesca Batidzirai never thought she would get married any time soon. Then she enrolled for a PhD in statistics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where she lectured and her life changed.
The academic, who is from Zimbabwe, focused her research on the tiny town of Mtubatuba on the KZN North Coast and examined trends in marriage; when people enter it, why it fails and how people transition between the changes.
“This PhD I started before I got married and, at that time, I was not planning to get married any time soon. It just happened but now it feels like it was preparing me for marriage,” she said.
Batidzirai, who lectures in the school of mathematics, statistics and computer science, said her research was important for public health because it provided insights into mental health.
Her study found that many girls under the age of 18 were forced into marriage when they became pregnant because their families considered it to be a burden and an embarrassment. It was often an “escape plan” from poverty but the marriages soon ended in divorce.
“Those less educated were more likely to get married earlier and also divorced sooner than those who were more educated. Those with no income tend to enter a marriage quicker than those with more income,” she said.
She also warned that the grass was not always greener on the other side and encouraged parents to “build their children’s careers so they are not prone to any kinds of abuse in the name of marriage”.
Batidzirai’s research also found that men generally remarried quicker than women when they lost a partner.
“If you divorce quickly, within two years or so, they are already remarried. Or even if their partner dies, their wife dies, they will quickly remarry. But with women, it’s different,” she said.
Batidzirai said that when a marriage was bad it was reflected in the behaviour of the children and even the married partners.
“They have stress, they have many kinds of emotional disorders which we do not address, especially in our black communities. We do not recognise things like bipolar disorder, we don’t recognise things like stress, and sometimes people end up having mental health issues when they have a bad marriage.”
She said many people would rather blame witchcraft than mental health disorders if someone acted differently.
In the middle of her research and working hard to complete her PhD thesis, Batidzirai discovered she was pregnant.
While she and her husband were coming to terms with having another baby on the way, doctors revealed that “one” was, in fact, “two”.
“I didn’t know whether I was supposed to be happy or down, because our financial situation was not good at the time. We were planning for one.
It took her two weeks to accept the situation and start planning for two babies.
“And since then, it has been a happy journey,” said Batidzirai.
Identical boys Nicholas and Xavier arrived as she started doing corrections to her thesis. A year later, the two mischief makers and their “deputy parent” and big sister, Yolanda, 3, attended their mom’s graduation this week.
The boys wiggled their way out of her arms and crawled in opposite directions while the Independent on Saturday photographer tried to capture the family.
Batidzirai said her next step would be to start supervising more theses and to encourage more girls to take up maths and science.
Independent on Saturday