It’s time Zimbabwe criminalized paternity fraud

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

The national conversation around fatherhood and family stability in Zimbabwe has taken a dark, unsettling turn in recent years.

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Week after week, viewers tune in to Tinashe Mugabe’s wildly popular television broadcast, “The Closure DNA Show.” 

There, they watch the heart-wrenching spectacle of men discovering that the children they have poured their lives, finances, and souls into raising are not biologically theirs. 

In one recent, devastating episode, viewers watched in disbelief as a father learned that all three of the children he had raised were not his.

What was once discussed in hushed tones as an occasional, isolated tragedy has exploded into a full-blown national crisis. 

The show has laid bare a rampant culture of paternity fraud, exposing how a shocking number of women intentionally, or through conscious subterfuge, lie to men about the true lineage of their offspring.

The statistics emerging from paternity testing centers across the country are nothing short of staggering. 

Estimates suggest that up to 70 percent of contested paternity cases in Zimbabwe return negative results. 

While these figures represent a self-selected group of suspicious men, the sheer volume of negative matches demonstrates an undeniable trend. 

In many of these instances, the deceit is calculated and deliberate. 

In others, a woman is fully aware of basic biology, knowing her timeline during the conception window involved multiple partners. 

Yet she chooses silence, allowing an innocent man to step into a monumental life commitment based on a lie.

We can no longer bury our heads in the sand or pretend this is merely a private domestic issue. 

Zimbabwe has a systemic crisis on its hands, and it demands immediate, decisive legislative action. 

It is high time we criminalize paternity fraud.

Under our current legal landscape, the intentional misrepresentation of paternity carries virtually no criminal consequences. 

If an individual crafts a fraudulent scheme to extract thousands of dollars from a bank or a business partner, state prosecutors immediately step in, charging the offender with fraud, theft by false pretenses, or forgery under the penal code. 

Yet, when a woman fraudulently misidentifies a man as the biological father—forcing him to exhaust his life savings on school fees, medical care, shelter, and general maintenance over decades—the law suddenly treats the deception as a secondary matter. 

This glaring legal double standard leaves male victims completely unprotected from one of the most destructive financial and emotional scams imaginable.

Beyond the staggering financial extraction, the psychological damage inflicted by paternity fraud is catastrophic. 

To trick a man into bonding with, loving, and shaping his identity around a child under false pretenses is a profound form of emotional cruelty. 

When the truth inevitably surface, the destruction ripples through generations, leaving broken men, fractured identity crises for the children involved, and destroyed family structures in its wake. 

Treating this level of calculated deceit as a minor civil grievance utterly fails to reflect the gravity of the harm committed against victims.

Enacting specific criminal penalties—such as jail time or heavy state fines for deliberate misrepresentation on official documents—is essential. 

Of course, the ultimate permanent solution would be to make paternity testing mandatory at birth—eliminating deception before it can ever begin.

However, we must also educate men on the civil litigation avenues already at their disposal.

Many victimized men remain unaware that they can file civil suits for fraud, claim restitution for past maintenance payments, or seek damages for emotional distress in our courts. 

Educating the public about these existing legal remedies is crucial, but civil lawsuits alone will never suffice as a deterrent. 

Civil court procedures are long, expensive, and often fail to recover funds from an insolvent offender. 

Without the weight of the criminal justice system, dishonest actors face zero real deterrent.

Enforcing accountability is a foundational principle of the legal system. 

The legal system already prosecutes and imprisons people for white-collar fraud, theft, and perjury. 

Fraud does not magically cease to be a crime simply because it happens within a domestic relationship. 

Shielding perpetrators of paternity fraud creates an environment of impunity, encouraging further dishonesty at the expense of unsuspecting men and the integrity of vital state records.

Zimbabwe cannot build a just society on the foundations of institutionalized deception. 

Protecting men from financial ruin and psychological destruction requires a firm legal boundary. 

The legislature must act now to pass laws that recognize paternity fraud as a serious criminal offense, while simultaneously equipping men with the knowledge to pursue civil justice. 

Truth, accountability, and fairness must finally be restored to the Zimbabwean family structure.

• Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to contact him on +263715667700 or mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com