The Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Ziyambi Ziyambi, has announced plans to amend Clause 8 of the Criminal Laws Amendment Bill (H.B. 4, 2024) to better address cases where offenders infect young children with Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) and HIV.
The Criminal Laws Amendment Bill seeks to align Sections 61, 70, 76, 83, and 86 of the Criminal Law, Codification and Reform Act with the Constitution of Zimbabwe. These sections define a young person as someone below 16, whereas the Constitution sets 18 as the age of majority.
The Bill underwent its second reading in Parliament yesterday. Clause 8 addresses the criminalisation of deliberate HIV transmission among the sexually transmitted diseases covered by the Criminal Law Code.
During the debate, some MPs expressed concerns about the clause’s clarity, particularly regarding how to determine “deliberate” HIV transmission.
“I have a problem even in the question of saying, how do you define deliberately because I do not foresee any court being able to convict a person for behaving been willfully involved in spreading HIV, or even any STI for that matter because I do not see how the deliberate aspect will be determined by the courts,” said Dzivarasekwa MP, Edwin Mushoriwa.
Similarly, Hwange Central MP, Daniel Molokela-Tsiye argued against the clause, citing difficulties in socially and legally to proving who in a particular relationship was infected first with HIV.
“Over the years, many countries have repealed this bad law and Zimbabwe was one of the last countries to repeal this law Section 79 where we said we are no longer criminalising alleged willful transmission of HIV,” he said.
Molokela said women are the ones who have been prosecuted under this law and it has been difficult to prove that they committed a criminal offence, “ because we all know that in this country, women are the ones who have health-seeking behaviour, they are the ones who are willing to do HIV tests.”
Minister Ziyambi clarified that the current formulation of Clause 8 is inaccurate. He explained that the aim is to make it an aggravating factor if someone convicted of sleeping with a young person is found to have deliberately transmitted an STI to that child.
Ziyambi noted that the policy targets those who prey on young people, who are presumed not to be sexually active. Medical reports will be used to determine if a young person was infected and whether they were previously sexually active.
The Minister assured Parliament that consenting adults will not be criminalised. He acknowledged the difficulty of proving deliberate transmission in such cases and pointed out that criminalisation has not been shown to reduce transmission rates.
Ziyambi said the clause will be revised to address the concerns raised during public hearings and parliamentary debates.
