Lawyers say the Marriages Act passed into law late in May by President Emmerson Mnangagwa promotes adultery.
The Act repealed the Marriages Act (Chapter 5:11) and Customary Marriages Act (Chapter 5:07) and introduced a civil partnership and a qualified civil marriage.
The new law also recognises an unregistered customary law union as a marriage.
Speaking to NewsDay recently, Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association director Abigail Matsvayi Pasipanodya said:
We are… concerned that unregistered customary law unions (kuroorana pachivanhu) are not fully recognised, and that civil partnerships can co-exist with civil marriages with the effect of eroding the monogamous nature of civil marriages.
The Marriages Act stipulates that all marriages are entered into between a man and a woman above 18 years of age.
It also criminalises the marriage of children under 18 years and imposes heavy penalties on those who facilitate the marriage of underage people.
A lawyer, who spoke to NewsDay on condition of anonymity, said:
The Act has brought some changes in that it has added marriages that were not initially recognised.
It has brought in civil partnerships in that before, they were not supposed to be in any other relationship with any other person. That was taken as adultery.
The new Act, however, brings relief to adultery in that a person who is married can have another relationship outside their marriage.
In a way, the new Act addresses another gap where if a man had a small house in case of death, that family, when it came to property sharing, was left out.
The property-sharing process only catered for the legal spouse, so it’s (Act) trying to address a problem of catering for both, however, creating other issues again.