A Zimbabwean teenage-boy stunned a local court by boldly telling a magistrate that anal sex was “brilliant” following accusations that he forced a 12-year-old boy into a “same sex act” resulting in the victim sustaining severe anal injuries.
The 15 year-old boy from Binga, in the North Western part of the country, surprised the court when he said that he saw nothing amiss with having sex with the twelve year old boy while they were out herding cattle.
After finding him guilty of “sodomising” his 12-year-old peer the adolescent was Friday (February 11) warned by the court that “sodomy” or same-sex relation was outlawed in Zimbabwe.
Sentencing the un-named adolescent, the magistrate Stephen Ndlovu, handed a corporal punishment sentence of four strokes of cane and also warned the two that they had not attained the age of consent to engage in sexual contact.
Sodomy while herding cattle in the bush is, reportedly, very much common in the Southern African country as it is viewed as training ground for sex with the opposite sex.
In 1995, President Robert Mugabe made international headlines when openly declared at the opening of the Zimbabwe’s International Book Fair
that gays and lesbians were “worse than pigs and dogs”.
Two years ago, Zimbabwe expanded the scope of its sodomy laws in a criminal law review. And under the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act of 2004 passed by parliament in 2004, but which only took effect on July 1, 2006, a new sexual crime, aggravated indecent assault, was created.
This crime is committed when a male or female commits an indecent assault involving non-consensual penetration with intent of any part of the body of the victim or perpetrator. It is more serious than the crime of indecent assault, which does not involve any such penetration.
Under the new law, an intimate hug or touch between people of the same sex now constitute a crime.
