Exploring and Understanding Child Labour and Children’s Rights in the Context of the African Social Value System in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The paper is concerned with accommodation under the 2013 Constitution of Zimbabwe and other related statutes of the complex interrelationship between protection against child labour, as a human right, and the expectation under Zimbabwe’s cultural norms and values that children, as part of their upbringing, should work within the family set up.  The paper notes that the 2013 Constitution gives primacy to human rights. Notwithstanding affirmation in the Constitution of every person’s right to culture, cultural norms and values that contradict human rights must give way. The paper also observes that the Constitution does not prohibit all forms of child labour.  Children may work at home, but it is for other statutes such as the Childrens’s Act, Labour Act and the Criminal Law Codification and Reform Act to elaborate on how children may be made to work in households without infringing their rights, such as the right to be protected from economic and sexual exploitation, from child labour and from maltreatment.