DNA Tests Uncover Hidden Trauma As Africa Grapples With Widespread Abuse
Editor’s note: This article discusses rape and sexual abuse.
A 37-year-old man has always had questions about the paternity of his firstborn child, a daughter. From the day his wife, then 20, went into labor when he expected her pregnancy to be in its seventh month, he had always had serious questions.
Over the years, the man, who Religion Unplugged is not identifying to protect his privacy, had decided to let it go — his Christian faith convincing him that if God had decided to give Joseph the honor of raising child Jesus in his own household, who was he to refuse?
One evening, after the couple had watched yet another episode of “The Closure,” the popular Zimbabwean TV show in which another woman was exposed for paternity fraud, he became anxious when his wife suggested they do a DNA test on their now 9-year-old daughter, to confirm his paternity.
READ: Inside The Church That Protected A Serial Child Abuser
“At first I thought she was joking, until I realized that her facial expression was not,” the horticulturalist said of his wife. “She was both serious and sad, the same sadness that always appeared on her face whenever this show is on TV, so I did know how to respond.”
Further probing led his wife to reveal the sexual abuse that she had suffered at the hands of a close relative — a now-disgraced politician who had later succumbed to COVID-19 while in jail for other sexual crimes — leading up to their wedding.
Later on, when she was a student teacher at a local college, the man’s wife had consulted a visiting female pastor about her secret.
True to his wife’s fears, the paternity tests came out negative, confirming he was not the father of their first child.
“The results changed nothing,” he added. “If anything, they have brought us closer as a couple because God had prepared my heart in advance to accept her as she was, and now realizing that she – orphaned as a toddler – had been a helpless victim that needed my support more than before.”
Until recently, DNA technology was not widely available in most African countries. However, in the past few years, the technology has not only become widely available but also increasingly affordable for many. At the same time, various social media platforms are abuzz with cases of ‘paternity fraud’, thereby creating increased demand for DNA paternity tests. From Zimbabwe to Ghana, from Namibia to Uganda, from Zambia to Nigeria, across all of Africa, DNA paternity tests are taking the continent by storm.
In Zimbabwe, over 70% of men who seek a DNA test discover they are not their child’s biological father, with the figure even higher in other countries. In African communities where issues of paternity are important for cultural and inheritance purposes, these test results not only put marriages on the line, but also lives as they can lead to murders and or suicides.
However, just like in the case of Thando, in most African patriarchal societies, it is not uncommon that some of these cases of ‘paternity fraud’ actually reveal that women were silent victims of rape. Sexual abuse in African cultures is common during wars and political turmoil, within families, and in past genocidal pogroms. Some women could be victims of sextortion in educational institutions, workplaces and in countless other unequal power relationships, who could not come out due to both lack of evidence and fear of stigma and or retribution.
With widespread use of DNA sweeping across Africa, some of these “legacy issues” are being brought to the surface, exposing the victims to fresh trauma. These exposures are not just tearing marriages and communities across the continent, but have also resulted in calls in countries like Uganda, Zambia and Tanzania for the tests to be banned altogether, while in others like Zimbabwe and Namibia, the calls are for these DNA paternity tests to be made mandatory at birth.
Zimbabwe, just like many other African countries, is never short of “untouchable big men: resulting in victims of their sexual abuse having nowhere to turn but to live in silence. It only emerged after his death that the late former president Robert Mugabe had sired a child with a female recruit during the country’s liberation war in the camps in Mozambique and used fear to silence both the woman and the child.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who has previously come under fire for pardoning a convicted child rapist, himself stands accused of child rape. His deputy, Kembo Mohadi, resigned in 2021 after a sex scandal involving a married subordinate, only for Mnangagwa to brush aside the scandal by bringing him back in 2023.
Some of the abuses actually take place within churches, the space where women are supposed to feel safest. Walter Magaya, a self-styled ‘prophet’ in Zimbabwe, is currently facing a series of rape charges dating back years. Cases of fathers raping their own biological daughters are also on the rise.
Usually, what may start off as cases of paternity fraud could unspool out of control to expose unreported abuses within families, leading to complications as this DNA technology appears to shame victims that it should be helping. With the tests regularly confirming abuses, and sometimes children born out of these abuses finding it hard to fit into the families, pastors — who usually offer counseling services for troubled marriages and families — are increasingly finding themselves having to handle emotive and sometimes very complex disputes that previously were easily handled with simple prayers due to a lack of evidence.
According to the Rev. Victor Chakanya, a Methodist church pastor who has done research on abuses in Epworth, a shanty settlement on the outskirts of Zimbabwe’s capital Harare, pastors are ill-equipped to deal with such complex cases of sexual abuse that sometimes take place right in the family, leaving victims traumatized.
“This research revealed that incestuous rape has disproportionately affected the lives of the victims in Epworth to the extent that many of them had suffered or are suffering from traumatic experiences of this form of sexual abuse,” Chakanya said of his 2022 study, “Socio-Cultural and Religious causes of rape in Zimbabwe: A case study of Epworth Community.”
“These victims had no one to share their harrowing ordeals with, as some of them had disclosed that their pastors had no relevant skills to deal with their experiences. After failing to get the required assistance from their pastors, a number of victims resorted to committing suicide, leaving notes that expressed the horrendous experiences they had gone through.”
Likewise, because of this deficiency of the required pastoral care, some turned to prostitution, while others left their homes and became “street kids.”
Dr Gladys Mwiti, a clinical psychologist and founder of Oasis Africa Wellness, a Christian counseling center in Nairobi, Kenya, said the issue goes beyond just patriarchal African cultures.
“Brokenness and the pain it brings know no culture. It’s all over, in every culture,” Mwiti told Religion Unplugged. “The stigma surrounding the disclosure of DNA test results is universal. The agenda for me is not only to expose, but also to ensure that healing and prevention of abuse are available in equal measure.”
She said in light of the latest developments, her center, which serves to bring healing to many hurting communities, would be researching more about the use of DNA in order to “explore resilience factors available, as well as training in building rich relations for the prevention of abuse and mitigation of healing for those affected.”
“There’s more at stake beyond exposing the need (for counselling services),” she added.
Pastor Talkmore Nyamadzawo, of the Armor of God Ministries in Zimbabwe’s central city of Kwekwe, agreed that as pastors they sometimes find themselves out of their depth in the face of that DNA testing is done, and if not handled with care, can only worsen problems.
“With these conclusive DNA paternity results, it becomes our duty as pastors not just to get to the bottom of the matters,” he said, “but also to provide adequate counseling to all the parties,” he said, “including the children who may find the new reality unpalatable.”
Cyril Zenda is a journalist based in Harare, Zimbabwe.