MARY ALEXANDER • 23 JUNE 2024

“A High court in Zimbabwe has ordered a newly married gay couple to be put under house arrest for 12 months,” reads a claim circulating on social media since May 2024.*

“If by the end of the period none of them will be pregnant, the court further ordered a death penalty.”

The claim uses a photo of two men cuddling on a couch. It’s been posted in Kenya, Kuwait, Nigeria, South Africa and the USA.

Comments include:

• South Africa’s government why don’t you take good advice from Zimbabwe?
• That’s the only thing I like about Zimbabwe.
• Applause for that government. Yes, each African nations must take a staunch stand against that human corruption.
• God was not insane when He created Adam and Eve, and not Adam and Steve.

But the claim is false, and not only because Zimbabwe’s restrictive laws against LGBTQ+ people would make it impossible for a court to pass such a ruling.

Gay marriage and sex between men illegal in Zimbabwe

First, same-sex marriage is not recognised in Zimbabwe. It’s also illegal.

Section 78 of the country’s 2013 constitution deals with marriage rights. It reads: “Persons of the same sex are prohibited from marrying each other.”

Second, consensual sex between men (but not women) is also illegal. The 2004 Criminal Law Act lumps all sex between men under the label “sodomy”, under a part of the law titled “Sexual Crimes and Crimes Against Morality”.

Section 73 of the act reads:

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.

Level 14 fines are the highest level courts can impose.

Death penalty on hold in Zimbabwe

But no law in Zimbabwe imposes the death penalty for same-sex marriage or relationships.

Capital punishment remains on the country’s statute books, but no-one has been executed there since 2005. The 2013 constitution protects the right to life. For these and other reasons, Zimbabwe is considered a de facto death penalty abolitionist state.

In February 2024 the Zimbabwe cabinet approved the Death Penalty Abolition Bill. If passed, the new law would prohibit any court from imposing a death sentence and prevent any previously imposed death sentence from being carried out.

Discrimination against LGBTQ+ people in Zimbabwe often hits the headlines. But there have been no credible news reports of a court making this absurd order.

* Some Facebook and Instagram users may have deleted their posts after Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program rated their claims as untrue.

Published by Africa Check on 27 June 2024

The post No, Zimbabwean court hasn’t threatened ‘newly married gay couple’ with death penalty if they don’t get pregnant appeared first on South Africa Gateway.

MARY ALEXANDER • 14 MAY 2024
Published by Africa Check on 20 May 2024

“Venus Williams forfeits match against trans woman,” reads text on a graphic circulating on social media in Nigeria, South Africa and elsewhere since late April 2024.*

“I’m not playing a man,” it quotes US tennis champion Williams as saying.

The graphic includes two photos, one supposedly of Venus Williams and the other of another female tennis player.

The graphic has been posted with comments such as:

• He should go and play with his fellow men or transgender. They should have their own category. They need to stop pitching them against biological women.
• Well said all women should do this.
• Venus is absolutely right on this. These people should stop forcing themselves on others.

The graphic can also be seen here, here, here, here, here and here.

But it’s false. Before we look into why, some definitions.

What is trans?

As categories, gender and sex are different things. Gender refers to socially accepted ideas of girlhood and womanhood, on the one hand, and boyhood and manhood on the other. Sex is based on biology and physiology, usually female and male but with some variations in between.

Trans or transgender people are born biologically male or female but have a different sense of themselves, unrelated to their biological sex. A trans woman was labelled male at birth but identifies as female. A trans man was labelled female at birth but identifies as male.

Trans encompasses a broad range of human experience. Some trans people simply dress and act according to their gender identity. Others choose to undergo hormone therapy or even medical procedures to make their bodies reflect their gender.

Trans is different to intersex, people whose bodies don’t fit neatly into the sex categories of male and female. Intersex people can be born with a range of differences in their chromosomes, genitals, genetic features or other parts of their bodies. South African athletics champion Caster Semenya is widely understood to be intersex.

Trans is the T in the acronym LGBTQIA+ and intersex is the I. The other letters stand for lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer or questioning, and asexual.

The rights of trans people have become an issue in the 2024 US presidential election. Likely Republican candidate Donald Trump has said he will roll back protections for trans people put in place by current Democratic president Joe Biden.

Back to the graphic.

Serena Williams and Amelie Mauresmo

Africa Check cropped the photos out of the graphic and ran them through reverse image searches.

We found the first photo, supposedly of Venus Williams, in a September 2022 article by the Japan Times. It’s headlined: “Serena Williams ends magical run at U.S. Open in what was likely her final tournament.”

Serena Williams is Venus Williams’s younger sister. She’s also a tennis champion.

In the article, the photo’s caption reads: “Serena Williams leaves the court after losing her third-round match to Australia’s Ajla Tomljanovic.” It’s attributed to the news service Reuters.

Other photos – here, here, here, here and here – show Serena Williams at the same September 2022 tournament, wearing the same outfit.

We found the second photo – claimed to be a “trans woman” – on the stock image site Flickr. It was uploaded 10 years ago in June 2014 and is titled “Amelie Mauresmo”.

Amelie Mauresmo is a retired professional tennis player based in France. She is not trans.

The photo can also be seen here, here and here, in each instance identified as Mauresmo.

Venus Williams is a famous, record-breaking athlete, and transgender issues have become a hot social and political topic. But there are no credible news reports of Williams forfeiting a match against a trans woman because she “refused to play a man”. If she had, it would have made global headlines.

The claim is false.

* Some claims posted on Facebook and Instagram may have been deleted by users after being rated via Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program.

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