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A recent landmark ruling by the High Court that it is illegal for spouses to pry into each other’s cellphones has sparked a lot of interest.
Harare High Court judge Justice Tawanda Chitapi said evidence obtained by snooping into a cellphone should not stand in court as it would have been obtained illegally.
Justice Chitapi made the ruling as he sentenced Fortunate Nsoro (36) of Chitungwiza to 10 years in jail for knifing her husband to death for refusing to show her a “suspicious” text message he had received on his cellphone.
Nsoro stabbed Petros Mutasa (55) in February last year. The judge said snooping into someone’s phone contravened Section 57(d) of the Constitution, which guarantees every person a right to privacy of communication.
“There is no law which provides that a husband or wife has a right to infringe on the privacy of the other’s communications . . . Nsoro’s insistence that Mutasa should divulge a communication made to him on his phone was in itself an infringement upon his right to privacy of communication,” said the judge.
While the judgment puts to rest the legal side of the issue of privacy in marriage, the social side still begs for an answer. How much privacy should there be in a marriage? Snooping is rarely an everyday occurrence. One snoops when suspicion has been triggered by prior actions, or lack of action in areas only couples should know about.
Still, the question remains: Is it justifiable to read or demand to read — as Nsoro did — a private message? Is it okay to spy or snoop on a “suspicious” partner? And do cheating partners deserve the right to privacy within the institution of marriage?
Let’s face it, the need for privacy is usually invoked when trust has been broken. Cheating partners demand privacy more. They hide their phones more often, have a series of passwords, answer their phones in private, speak on the phone in hushed tones and are agitated when someone touches their phone.
The guilty are afraid. In marriage, the innocent wouldn’t care less about the ruling by Justice Chitapi. For the innocent, the ruling is a non-event, but for the guilty, it’s much-needed justification for all that security. In worst case scenarios, whatever is obtained from their phones cannot be used in court.
Because of patriarchy, it is tolerated for men to enjoy privacy which women cannot.
Some men, whether a partner has cheated or not, demand passwords to Facebook accounts, e-mail etc as a way of keeping their “investment” under check. Some insecure women do the same. Is this right? What happened to the trust and security that come with marriage?
It is important to note that every Zimbabwean has a right to privacy enshrined in the Constitution! This must be respected regardless of one’s relationship. People should learn to respect each other and treat others as they wish to be treated.
A cellphone is a tool for communication. It can never be the cause of marriage breakdowns. Suspicions, mistrust, infidelity are the issues couples need to address and not cellphones or e-mail accounts. The judgment on the issue of cellphones is merely asserting individual rights to privacy, where a spouse would demand and or use underhand tactics to access the contents of one’s mobile phone without consent.
The court did not say do not touch the other party’s phone, but that you cannot snoop into the phone. The results of snooping as in the Nsoro case are usually bad. In many cases, men who snoop into their wives’ cellphones and find them cheating end up leaking these messages on social networks and even in the media, that is if they are fortunate not to be killed. The videos and text messages are usually obtained violently.
Social media often publish such text messages without the consent of the concerned parties resulting in humiliation. Children also suffer as a result of this. Remember most of these couples have kids who go to school and their classmates know their parents. How do such children socialise after their parents’ explicit materials have been leaked through the media?
Cases of revenge porn, usually after someone has snooped into a partner’s phone, have been on the increase, prompting NGO Katswe to petition Parliament to enact a law barring revenge pornography to protect individuals from having their nude pictures or videos published without their consent.
Online Reporter