President Mnangagwa has signed into law, the Criminal Laws Amendment (Protection of Children and Young Persons) Bill, 2024, raising the age of consent from 16 to 18 and protecting young people from sexual predators and early marriages.
The amendment was passed by both Houses of Parliament in July and on Tuesday, the President signed the Bill into law.
This was announced in a proclamation under General Notice 1441A of 2024 in an Extraordinary Government Gazette published on Tuesday by the Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet, Dr Martin Rushwaya.
The new law follows a Constitutional Court (Concourt) ruling in May 2022 which found that the Criminal Law Code did not adequately protect children between the ages of 16 and 18 from sexual exploitation.
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Under the new law, the age of sexual consent has been raised to 18, consistent with the Constitution, which sets the minimum marriage age at 18 and defines all young people as people below the age of 18.
In the original law, young people were defined as those below the age of 16, meaning those aged between 16 and 18 were not protected.
Following the ruling, President Mnangagwa invoked his powers in January this year under the Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) Act to gazette Statutory Instrument 2 of 2024, in compliance with the Concourt ruling that had declared unconstitutional, the section of the law that set the age of sexual consent at 16.
The temporary measures were only valid for six months as required by law, meaning a substantive law had to be promulgated.
This resulted in Parliament passing the new law that was gazetted this Tuesday.
The development has been welcomed by observers and child parliamentarians as it will go a long way in protecting children and young people from sexual abuse and early marriages.
Constitutional law expert, Professor Lovemore Madhuku, described the law as progressive.
“This is a law that is progressive and conforms with international best practices and standards. It also aligns the law with the Constitution in line with the ruling of the Constitutional Court,” he said.
Prof Madhuku added that the new law also provides harsher penalties of up to 10 years in prison for people that abuse children, which was previously not the case.
He added that by stating that people below 18 cannot consent to sex, it means that people who have sex with people below 18 cannot use it as a defence, even in cases where they could have consented.
Prof Madhuku also commended provisions that punish people who infect children and young persons with sexually transmitted infections including HIV.
Addressing participants during a workshop facilitated by the Southern Africa Parliamentary Support Trust on children’s expectations from the 2025 National Budget, Reverend Taylor Nyanhete, the director of the Zimbabwe National Council for the Welfare of Children, said the signing of the Bill into law is a welcome development.
“Today (yesterday) people are celebrating because we now have a law and our hope is that those that commit the crime (of sexually abusing children and young people) will also face the law and be able to serve the sentences for their crimes.
“So, this is one thing that is progressive,” he said.
Child parliamentarians that attended the meeting thanked the President for assenting to the law.
“I want to thank President Mnangagwa for signing the law as this will go a long way in protecting children and young persons from child marriages and sexual abuse and provide mechanisms to deal with perpetrators of such crimes,” said Anesu Tazarurwa, child MP for Highfield Constituency.
Her counterpart from Zengeza West Constituency, Advocate Gwenzi, said: “This law will protect children, especially those forced into child marriages.
“This will further provide ways to deal with those that sexually abuse children and young people,” he said.
Paida Hove from Chizhanje Senatorial seat said the new provisions mean that people preying on young persons for sexual activities will be punished accordingly.
“The new law has come at the right time for our constituencies, which believed that childhood ends at 16. By raising it to 18, the President has provided further protection to young people, especially provisions that expressly state that young people below 18 cannot consent to sex,” she said.
After the Bill was read for the third time in the Senate in July, signalling the passage of the proposed law that had already passed through the National Assembly, Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi thanked Senators for their contributions.
“I want to thank the Honourable Senators. It is very difficult when you bring legislation to get both sides of the Senate agreeing on something and today is one of those few occasions where we encountered no dissenting voice and I want to thank the Honourable Senators.
“You see, every time I come to this august Senate, I jokingly say that this is a House of mature people who are able to separate petty issues from issues that are national and in this case we are dealing with an issue on the protection of our young children,” he said.
In presenting the Bill earlier on, Minister Ziyambi described it as a pertinent Bill that sought to align sections 61, 70, 76, 83 and 86 (of the Criminal Code) with the Constitution of Zimbabwe.
“These sections defined a young person as a person below the age of 16. However, the Constitution of Zimbabwe places 18 years as the age of majority,” he said.
Minister Ziyambi said the Criminal Law Codification and Reform Act contains several sections that protect children from sexual exploitation.
The sections call children ‘young persons’ and that term is defined as meaning boys and girls under the age of 16 years. However, the Constitution fixed 18 years as the age at which one is considered to have attained adult status.
