Judgment No. CCZ 12/2015 58 Const. Application No. 79/14 the term “marriageable age” which may be deployed to leave the fixing of the age of marriage to separate legislation other than the Constitution itself. They chose not to do so and by necessary implication set the minimum age of eighteen in the Constitution. By contrast the equivalent provision in the 2000 Draft Constitution specifically relegates the fixing of the marriage age to separate legislation, thus: “27 Marriage The State must take appropriate measures to ensure that – a) Men and women of marriageable age are free to marry each other and found a family.” [emphasis added] Section 78 is headed ‘Marriage rights’, yet the main provision (subsection (1)) does not contain the word “marriage”. The other subsections are all about marriage. It is thus necessary, as well as just and equitable, to construe subsection (1) of section 78 as if it read: “1) Every person who has attained the age of eighteen years has the right to marry and found a family.” The legislative history of the provision, the general scheme of the section itself and a reading of the section in conjunction with the other provisions of the Constitution – all support the view that, by necessary implication, s 78 of the Constitution sets eighteen years as the minimum age of marriage in Zimbabwe. Finally, while this judgment may have addressed the issue of child marriages, this is akin to the mending of the roof during the storm in the sense that a myriad of legislative and State resource mobilization measures have become urgent and imperative consequent upon this decision. One can but point out just a few imperatives: