Abstract | This article historicizes the legal regulation of sexuality and claims to sexual rights in South Africa and Zimbabwe, analyzing their implications. Focusing on the interaction of formal Constitutions and informal customary law in the differential development of agency and rights, it highlights the constancy of women's partial legal subjectivity alongside shifts in authority from lineage to nation-state. The tensions between the legal formalism of rights, and the historical authority of customary structures buttress the regulation of sex and the claims to sexual rights within these two countries, and they frame a discussion of how sexualhealth programs and policies might better engage with the development of sexual agency. |
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