High Court stops HIV transmission case

Zim Now Writer

A Harare woman who was facing charges of deliberately infecting her partner with HIV has had her prosecution stopped by the High Court.

Lindiwe Ndhlovu was arrested and charged with deliberate transmission of HIV in March 2022.

Through her lawyer Paidamoyo Saurombe from the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, Ndhlovu filed an application for removal from further remand after wilful HIV transmission was decriminalised.

“High Court judge Justice Fatima Maxwell has stopped the prosecution of a Harare woman, who is on trial at Harare Magistrates’ Courts on a charge of deliberate transmission of HIV as defined in section 79 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act,” the ZLHR said in a statement.

“On Tuesday, Justice Maxwell ordered that criminal proceedings against the 44-year-old Harare woman should be stopped pending the determination of an application for review of the decision by Harare magistrate Taurai Manuwere, who insisted on proceeding with the trial of the woman on a charge which no longer exists as section 79 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act was repealed after President (Emmerson) Mnangagwa signed the Marriages Amendment Bill decriminalising wilful transmission of HIV.”

Ndhlovu’s lawyers argued that section 70(1)(1) of the Constitution provides that no person may be convicted of an act or omission that is no longer an offence and also that the law under which she was being charged was repealed.

Zimbabwe became the second country in Africa to fully repeal its HIV-specific criminal law in April 2022 when the Marriages Amendment Bill was signed into law.

Before the legislation was passed, deliberate transmission of HIV attracted a sentence of up to 20 years in prison under section 79 of Zimbabwe’s Criminal Code although the statute was, however, seldom enforced.