MUTARE, Zimbabwe – Women in Zimbabwe are taking the government to court challenging a ban on the importing of sex toys in the country.
Importing sex toys is a criminal act in Zimbabwe, which criminalises the shipping of any goods regarded as “indecent”.
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The law that prohibits bringing sex toys into the country has been in place for decades, but it’s been in the spotlight more than ever after a series of high-profile arrests.
As the law is increasingly being used to crack down on women, women’s rights groups are fighting back. They argue that legalising sex toys will mean they are properly regulated, and that will mean that recent controversies around sex toys – including a woman being jailed for, she says, inadvertently selling them to a 12-year-old girl – will not be repeated.
The Women’s Academy For Leadership and Political Excellence, an organisation that advocates for the rights of women in politics, has spearheaded the movement to review the law that prohibits the import of sex toys.
Sitabile Dewa, an executive director at the group, told VICE World News that the act “has been overtaken by modernity.”
She said: “The act bars the importation of sex toys. This clause infringes on women’s rights to choice, association and pleasure.”
Dewa lodged a court application last month to try and repeal the law.
The southern African nation used this law last year to arrest, charge and convict two women for importing and selling sex toys.
On the 20th of December 2022, 23-year-old influencer Ayanda Muponda was convicted by a magistrate in Mbare, a populous suburb of the capital, Harare, for smuggling and trading sex toys.
She was ordered to carry out 640 hours of community service after her initial two-year prison sentence was suspended on the condition she completes the community service and doesn’t repeat the same offence within the next five years.
Muponda had already spent two weeks in prison in May 2022, before being released on bail following an arrest for selling sex toys to different people, including minors.
Prosecutors argued that Muponda was exposing children to pornographic materials after it emerged she had sold sex toys worth $1,000 to a 12-year-old girl.
Muponda was accused of smuggling sex toys into the country and selling them to various people via social media platforms including Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.
Muponda said she didn’t realise the customer was 12 years old and reportedly offered to refund the girl’s mother after being told about the girl’s age.
Despite the current restrictive laws, there are several sex toy shops in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city and in Harare, including one called “Intimate”, which claims to be operating legally. In Zimbabwe, laws are often applied selectively.
Authorities maintain that all sex toys in the country have been imported illegally, as the law explicitly prohibits the importation of sex toys.
Women rights campaigners argue that legalising and regulating sex toys will prevent similar disturbing events from happening in the future. They say under new rules, sex-toy traders would be prevented from selling to minors in the same way alcohol, cigarettes and condoms are sold and regulated.
In October last year, Shirley Chapunza, a Gwanda State University female lecturer, was jailed for six months in Zimbabwe’s second-largest city of Bulawayo after being found guilty of illegally importing sex toys from Germany.
She was given the option to pay a fine of 60,000 Zimbabwean dollars ($75, £62) to avoid the jail term by a Bulawayo magistrate.
Chapunza was arrested in May 2022 when she went to collect her parcel from Germany, which contained three dildos, at the Bulawayo branch of the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority offices, a state agency that facilitates trade and travel.
Zimbabwe is a religious country with more than 80 percent of its population identifying as Christian, according to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency.
Beatrice Mtetwa, a prominent Zimbabwean human rights lawyer, said there could be no question that the law banning sex toys is a serious intrusion on a private matter for consenting adults.
“It is no different from regulating the sexual positions parties should follow in the privacy of their bedrooms,” Mtetwa told VICE World News.
Some people in the country, particularly those with Christian backgrounds, believe that sex toys are only popular among the gay community, but gay rights activists say that is a misconception.
“Sex toys are used by everyone regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity,” said Chesterfield Samba, an executive director at GALZ, a voluntary membership-based organisation that promotes and protects the human rights of LGBTQ people in Zimbabwe.
“So, it is not an issue that we can say is a preserve of the LGBTI community because sex does take place in our community even alone, as partners or as a group.”
Samba said the government is trying to regulate conduct that takes place in people’s bedrooms.
“That is interfering in people’s personal or private lives,” Samba said. “Sex toys have been around and people have been using them whether as individuals, couples and or groups.”
Sex workers also fear the authorities will come after them since they also use sex toys as part of their work, especially since lockdown rules were imposed.
Amid the COVID pandemic when sex workers and clients could not meet in person, Zimbabwe saw a surge in online sex including live video chats.
“Sex toys improve positive attitudes about sex and promote learning, loving yourself, making healthy and responsible sexual choices,” said Hazel Zemura, a director at All Women Advocacy, a sex workers’ rights group lobbying for the decriminalisation of consenting adults’ sex work in Zimbabwe.
“The pleasure principles in sexual reproductive health rights always put personal sexual needs and choices at the centre of sexual reproductive health… consenting adults’ sex [lives] should not be regulated, because it is done in privacy.”