Couples ‘divorce’ over voting difference

Husbands who abandoned their children after disagreeing with their wives’ choices in Zanzibar’s election must provide for their families, a women’s rights lawyer has said.
The call comes after divorces following October’s election.
The vote on the semi-autonomous archipelago was cancelled. Even so, Tanzania’s Daily News reports eight women at a lawyers’ meeting said their husbands had divorced them over their voting preference.
Saada Salum Issa, programme co-ordinator of the Zanzibar Female Lawyers Association, told BBC she had concerns about the divorces.
“This is really affecting democracy in the island as women’s free choice is being compromised by their spouses’ dictation,” she said.
Some women had not voted in the poll because of divorce threats, she added.
The Daily News added that women whose husbands had left them were complaining that they had also abandoned their children.