news

NEWS
New Sex Law to Curb HIV/AIDS, Marital Rape in Zimbabwe
Agence France Presse (08.24.01)::Susan Njanji

Zimbabwe has passed a new law that criminalizes the deliberate transmission of HIV, recognizes rape in marriages and imposes heavy penalties for a host of sexual offenses. The Sexual Offenses Act, which also seeks to protect youths and mentally handicapped persons from sexual predators, was recently signed into law by President Robert Mugabe. The new law will make it an offense to willfully infect others with the virus. With an average of one of every four adults infected, Zimbabwe has one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world.

Deliberate transmission of HIV will earn a convicted person a prison sentence of up to 20 years. "Any person who, having actual knowledge that he is infected with HIV, intentionally does anything or permits the doing of anything which he knows ... will infect another person with HIV, shall be guilty of an offense, whether or not she is married to that person," reads part of the act. The new law considers non-consensual sex within marriage as rape. According to Zimbabwe's national HIV/AIDS policy, studies have shown that unprotected sex within marriage may be the most significant risk factor for many women. A clause of the act says: "Any person who, whether or not married to the other person, without the consent of that person" proceeds to have sexual act without the other's permission, will have committed a punishable offense.
Although there are fears that the new law may put people off getting tested for HIV, Sunanda Ray, director of Southern African AIDS Dissemination Information Services, believes that "most people get tested to protect themselves, not others." However, the biggest fear still remains that women might end up being sued by their husbands for the transmission of HIV, because they are usually the first to know that they are infected when they get tested at antenatal clinics.
A lawyer for the Gays and Lesbians Association of Zimbabwe, Derek Matyseck, said the 20-year sentence for willful transmission of HIV was "only symbolic," given that most people die within a few years of becoming infected.