Harare - Zimbabwe has passed a new law that criminalises marital rape and the deliberate transmission of HIV, and imposes heavy penalties for a host of sexual offences. In a country where one in four adults has HIV, the Sexual Offences Act will make it an offence to wilfully infect others with the virus that causes AIDS.
It reads: "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 offence, whether or not she is married to that person."