In Malawi section 138 of the Malawi Penal Code provides for the offence of defilement, and a defence to the offence. In full, the section provides as follows: “138. Defilement of girls under sixteen years of age (1) Any person who unlawfully and carnally knows any girl under the age of sixteen years shall be guilty of a felony and shall be liable to imprisonment for life. (2) Any person who attempts to have unlawful carnal knowledge of any girl under the age of sixteen years shall be guilty of felony and shall be liable to imprisonment for fourteen years. Provided that it shall be a sufficient defence to any charge under this section if it shall be made to appear to the court, jury or assessors before whom the charge shall be brought that the person so charged had reasonable cause to believe and did in fact believe that the girl was of or above the age of sixteen years.” This is to be read together with section 160B of the Penal Code. The 2011 amendments introduced a new offence through section 160B(1), of which the first part reads as follows: “Any person who engages or indulges in sexual activity with a child shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable to imprisonment for twenty-one years.” Sexual activity is defined in section 160A to mean “sexual contact other than sexual intercourse (whether between persons of the same or opposite sex) in the form of genital, oral-genital, anal-genital contact or otherwise, masturbation, touching of genitals, buttocks or breasts, sadistic or masochistic abuse and other deviant sexual behaviour.” Section 160B was introduced to cover the lacuna left by section 138 which only deals with sexual intercourse. Section 160B introduces a blanket criminalisation of sexual activities with a child below 16 years of age, including normative and non-exploitative sexual activity between children who are peers. In the Botswana Penal Code, the defence is set out in section 147(5) as follows: “It shall be a sufficient defence to any charge under this section if it appears to the court before whom the charge is brought that the person so charged had reasonable cause to believe and did in fact believe that the person was of or above the age of 16 years or was such charged person's spouse”. The question to be posed is: How constitutional and proper is the statutory defence to having sexual intercourse with a young person, when the offence is a strict liability offence and the goal of penalising sexual intercourse with underage persons is to protect them from sexual exploitation? Zimbabwean courts have not addressed this aspect, but an assessment of generally applicable legal principles, and the approaches enunciated by other courts in the region is instructive. 25