136 | Zimbabwe Rule of Law Journal accused has not negligently caused death. In a case of self-defence the court could seek to rely upon section 86(1) of the 2013 Constitution which provides that the fundamental rights in Chapter 4, which includes the right to life, must be exercised reasonably and with due regard to the rights of other persons. The problem with this is that the murderous attacker is not exercising his right to life; he is in fact threatening the life to the person he is attacking so it is not a matter of the attacker being obliged to exercise his rights reasonably. Another approach might be for the court to interpret the right to life guarantee as impliedly being subject to a common law doctrine of necessity. Thus it could be ruled that where a person is under murderous attack and the only way that he can save his life is to kill the attacker, he was obliged to act out of necessity. The right to life of the person murderously attacking must surely be subordinate to the life of the attacker. Additionally, section 52 provides that every person has the right to bodily integrity which includes the right to freedom from all forms of violence from public or private sources. This right adheres to a person who is under a murderous attack. The courts would surely adopt a common sense interpretation of the right to life so as to provide that a person is entitled to defend his or her life against a person who is trying to kill him or her. In other words, there is a natural right to act for the purposes of self-preservation against an unlawful attacker. The defence of self-defence can also apply where a person uses reasonable means to avert a violent attack which will cause serious injury but not death. Here it might be contended that the right to life of the unlawful attacker outweighs the threat of bodily injury to person attacked but, of course, there is often a thin dividing line between injury and death. Killing in Defence of Property The Criminal Law Code also provides in sections 257 and 258 that in extreme circumstances a person has a defence where he kills in defence of property. Some would argue that the law should not allow this defence on the basis that the right to life is more important than the protection of property. Be