(Zimbabwańska kara śmierci za brak ciąży u gejów? TikTok mówi nieprawdę!)
CLAIM: In Zimbabwe a homosexual couple has been put under house arrest for 12 months. If neither of them gets pregnant, they will be sentenced to death.
SOURCE: Account on TikTok
VERDICT: False
On 13 May 2024, a Polish man reported on TikTok that in Zimbabwe a homosexual couple had been put under house arrest for 12 months. If neither of them gets pregnant, they will be sentenced to death.
This is not a new claim. Similar claims have been made by various accounts on Facebook. This claim appeared in 2021 here and in 2023 here.
In 2021, AFP debunked the claim. Although Facebook indicates on some of the claims that this is false information, the warning has not stopped the claim from making the rounds once again.
A close look at the TikTok video shows that it is based on a screenshot from a post on X (formerly Twitter) that was posted by an account named @AfricanHub. It was posted on 4 May and had garnered, at the time of the fact check, 777 000 views and 1 600 reposts.
The post claims; ‘A High court in Zimbabwe has ordered a newly married gay couple to be put under house arrest for 12 months and if by the end of the period none of them will be pregnant, the court further ordered a death penalty’.
There are tell tale signs that this is false information. For starters, Zimbabwe does not recognise same sex marriages. These are constitutionally prohibited in Section 78.
Section 73 (i) of the Criminal Law, Codification and Reform Act prohibits sex between consenting men. It states that ‘Any male person who, with the consent of another male person, knowingly performs with that other person anal sexual intercourse, or any act involving physical contact other than anal sexual intercourse that would be regarded by a reasonable person to be an indecent act, shall be guilty of sodomy and liable to a fine up to or exceeding level fourteen or imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year or both’.
Only men are criminalised under this law.
However, there is nowhere in the law that a death penalty or any other beyond the fine and/or one year imprisonment can be imposed.
There has been a recent case where two males were arrested on sodomy charges, which could have led to this claim re-emerging.
The two were arraigned before the courts on 2 April 2024 over a 31 March incident. They were found guilty of sodomy and sentenced to pay a US$150 fine each or 120 days imprisonment in default of payment.
Conclusion
The claim by a Polish TikTokker that ‘in Zimbabwe a homosexual couple has been put under house arrest for 12 months. If neither of them gets pregnant, they will be sentenced to death’ has been rated as false. The video was based on an equally false claim from X that ‘A High court in Zimbabwe has ordered a newly married gay couple to be put under house arrest for 12 months and if by the end of the period none of them will be pregnant, the court further ordered a death penalty’. Same sex marriages are prohibited in Zimbabwe and in cases of sodomy, the sentence is a fine up to or exceeding level fourteen or imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year or both. In a recent court case, two men convicted of sodomy were sentenced to a fine of US$150 each or failing to pay, 120 days in prison.
