Zimpapers Logo

Daisy Jeremani Gender Editor
ZIMBABWE is in urgent need of a sex offenders database and proper ways of storing Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) samples so that they would not be contaminated if cases of rape are to be effectively dealt with by the courts.

Speaking during a debate in parliament recently, Khumalo East Member of Parliament Tabitha Khumalo said it was appalling that in this day and age police were failing to store forensic evidence like DNA samples, allowing offenders to “get away with murder”.

“We’ve a paedophile at a school doing community service. As a country we don’t have a database for these paedophiles, so that next time when he commits the same crime, we look into the computer, identify them and monitor them,” she said.

Khumalo added that there was a lot of laxity in terms of guarding or storing evidence, saying the police were not doing enough to make sure that evidence will be admissible in court

“I’m raped for example, I go to the police and one of the institutions that violate our rights when we’ve been raped is the police. They dehumanise us and require one to re-live that rape. After re-living that rape, I go to a hospital for tests to prove that I was raped. The next time that I go to court I’m then told that my DNA has been contaminated because it’s kept together nematehwe (cow hide), stolen beef or what a view. That must stop!

“The DNA for rape victims must be a stand-alone so that when we go to the court we’ve enough evidence to put these perpetrators, get them locked up and throw away the keys.”

The firebrand MP also moaned how the judiciary was also letting down children who would have been abused by sending offenders to the same schools where they would have committed the heinous crimes.

“Somebody in his or her wisdom decided that the school was a good place for a paedophile given a community service sentence to go and rape some more,” she said.

Khumalo said if Zimbabwe is to address some of the issues that she raised, there is a need to repeal or amend the Criminal Codification Act which gives magistrates a leeway to impose community service in instances where an individual who abuses a child between 12 and 16 can demonstrate that there was “consent”.

Khumalo also waded into the debate on the age of consent, saying Section 70 of the same law has “killed” the girl child, by letting lecherous men prey on her.

“A 12-year-old is a child and not a woman. This country must respect our children because what this basically means is that we’re sentencing the girl child to death” she said.