Mary Mundeya
Tendai’s Story – The exile at the border
The relentless does little to stop the hassle, bustle and chaos that is the norm at Beitbridge border post. For Tendai (name changed for ethical reasons), 28, like other travelers this place was meant to be a gateway to a better livelihood, but instead, his experience aggravated his nasty experience of a future that was stolen.
The theft began at birth but was confirmed and worsened at puberty.
Assigned female at birth despite having ambigous genetalia, Tendai’s body rebelled against that simple classification.
They developed a deep voice, broad shoulders and facial hair.
The world reacted with a cruelty that was swiftly medicalised. The goal was explicit, to sculpt their body to match the ‘F’ on their birth certificate.
Between 14 and 16, they were subjected to a series ‘corrective’ surgeries.
The first was a clitoroplasty, a reduction of what doctors called a ‘masculinised’ clitoris, a procedure that promised to ‘normalise’ their appearance but permanently damaged sexual sensation. This was followed by a vaginoplasty, intended to construct a vaginal opening that aligned with a typical female anatomy.
“They were trying to carve a woman out of me,” Tendai* stated, their voice flat. “They could shape the outside, but they couldn’t put in what was missing. They couldn’t give me a womb. So I was left with scars, and a body that still felt like a lie,” they told She Corresponds Africa.
Despite the trauma, Tendai’s* mind remained their sanctuary. They became a brilliant student, graduating among the top in their class with a degree in Business Management from one of Zimbabwe’s leading universities. They dared to dream of a corner office in Harare and of a career built on intellect and merit.
But the ‘F’ on their degree certificate was a lie that followed them.
In job interviews, their hard-won qualifications were instantly invalidated by the confusion in the interviewers’ eyes.
“You could see the moment they decided,” Tendai* explained. “The shift from professional interest to personal discomfort. The mind they wanted to hire was trapped in a body their paperwork refused to describe.”
With formal employment impossible, cross-border trading became their only option.
But at the border, even the state institutions were a stumbling block.
The state was rejecting the classification it had given them without consent.
“This is a very good fake,” an immigration officer declared, examining Tendai’s Zimbabwean passport, while hordes of travelers fixed their eyes on them.
“The laminate, the hologram… they are almost perfect. But the forger made a stupid mistake,” the immigration officer shouted at the top of his voice, attracting further unwelcome interest on Tendai.
He thrust the passport forward, jabbing his finger at the sex marker.
“Look at you. You are clearly a man. But they put you down as a female. What kind of idiot forger gets the sex wrong?”
Pulled from the queue, Tendai was led to a holding room. They endured an hour of interrogation before a senior officer arrived with a biometric scanner. The machine verified Tendai’s identity, confirming the passport was genuine and they were a citizen.
But there was no apology.
Instead, the officers gathered, whispering amongst themselves.
“So the passport is real,” one muttered. “But how can the details be so wrong? It doesn’t make sense.”
In that moment, the university graduate was in familiar territory of disillusionment.
“I showed them the truth, and the truth proved I was a liar,” Tendai whispered later.
“They cut me apart to fit their forms, and now, the forms are what betray me. My passport is real, but my existence is treated as the forgery.”
Nyasha’s Story: The footballer whose body became a crime
Like Tendai, 17-year-old Nyasha (name changed for ethical reasons) found their world shrinking because of a single letter on their national identity document. For Nyasha, the football pitch was the one place where the world made sense. As a star midfielder for the girls’ team, their talent was a blazing promise, with scouts talking of a guaranteed spot on the national Under-17 squad.
The day they went to get their National ID, their head was filled with visions of a green passport and the roar of a national stadium. They were so excited, they barely looked at the plastic card when it was handed over. They didn’t notice the clerk’s error.
The clerk, barely looking up from the desk, had taken one glance at Nyasha’s physique and short-cropped hair. In a country where the world is divided into M and F, he made a choice. Without consulting the birth certificate, he scrawled an ‘M’ in the sex marker box.
That single, careless pen stroke became an inescapable cage. When the school tried to process their passport for the national team, the application was rejected. The system flagged a critical mismatch, a ‘female’ on the birth certificate, but a ‘male’ on the new National ID.
Desperate, Nyasha’s mother, Grace (name changed for ethical reasons), approached the headmaster, hoping the school could help untangle the bureaucratic knot. She confided in him about the intersex variation. It was a plea for help, but it was treated as a confession of a secret.
“That is when all hell broke loose,” Nyasha says, their voice barely a whisper.
“The headmaster must have told someone. The rumours started the next day.”
Whispers slithered through the school corridors; “Nyasha has both organs. Nyasha is not a real girl.”
The football star became a target. Teammates who once passed them the ball now avoided them in the hallways. They were no longer allowed to use the girls’ toilets and were effectively banned from wearing the girls’ uniform.
“Football was my escape. Now it’s a curse,” Nyasha told She Corresponds Africa.
“Every time I step on that field, everyone is staring, whispering. I am a threat to them just by existing.”
At home, their mother Grace, watches the light fade from her child’s eyes.
“This piece of paper, this wrong letter, is turning my child into a foreigner in the only home they’ve ever known,” she says.
The coach, citing the ‘distraction’ and the ‘impossible situation’ with the documents, has quietly told them they can no longer play for the school team.
The national team scouts have also stopped calling, leaving them disillusioned.
“I just wanted to play for my country,” Nyasha says.
“But the ‘M’ on my ID disqualifies me from the girls’ team. The ‘F’ on my birth certificate means my passport application is rejected. So my own documents have locked me out,” they said with a shacking voice.
The ghost child: A life unwritten
While Nyasha battles with conflicting documents, another child faces an even more fundamental exclusion.
In a small village in Masvingo’s Gutu district, a five-year-old plays in the dust, completely unaware of the legal void that surrounds their existence.
This child has no birth certificate, and no official name recognised by the state.
The chain of abandonment began at birth.
When the village midwife saw the newborn’s ambiguous genitalia, she felt a familiar dread.
In her tradition, such a birth is considered a bad omen that could bring misfortune. Fear for her livelihood overcame her duty, and she severed all ties.
The child’s father abandoned the family soon after.
Left alone, the mother postponed registration, paralysed by fear. Her plans to ‘go next week’ ended when a sudden illness took her life.
Now, the grandmother Muchaneta (name changed for ethical reasons) faces impossible barriers.
“The headman refuses to write the letter we need,” she explains.
“He believes this child is a curse. Without his affidavit, I cannot even begin the process.” she told She Corresponds Africa.
The consequences are already unfolding. The child cannot enroll in preschool, and even simple clinic visits become bureaucratic nightmares.
“This child was born right here in this village,” Muchaneta says, “but everyone acts like they don’t exist. The midwife looks away, the headman turns his back,” she added.
An activist from the Intersex Community of Zimbabwe confirms the devastating reality.
“This is how statelessness begins – through a cascade of silence and fear. From the village level to government systems, everyone fails these children until they become invisible to the state,” they say.
Between biology and bureaucracy
The crises facing Tendai, Nyasha, and Masvingo child from Gutu district stem from a collision between human biology and a state that permits only two categories for it.
“Intersex is an umbrella term for natural sex characteristics that don’t fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies,” explains Dr Norman Matara, secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights. He notes there are over 40 known variations.
This is not a rare anomaly.
As Amnesty International points out, between 1.7% and 2% of the world’s population is born with intersex traits, about as common as having red hair.
Zimbabwe’s constitution recognises only males and females, creating a system where intersex individuals are “forced into one category or the other, even if they don’t fit either,” says Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission chairperson Jessie Majome.
This forced categorisation begins at birth.
“When an intersex person is born, they assign a sex which is either male or female,” says Dorcas Chitiyo of the Health Law and Policy Consortium.
“But then when you grow up, sometimes… the biological makeup does not fit what you were assigned.”
The pressure to conform often leads to irreversible, non-consensual surgeries on infants, a practice the UN Human Rights Council specifically targets for elimination in its landmark April 2024 resolution on intersex rights.
“The moment we assign them a binary gender, it creates problems for them in the future,” says Dr. Matara.
“They will be stuck with that sex assigned at birth, whilst their bodies may then evolve to represent the other sex.”
This medical and bureaucratic pressure manifests what advocates term the “6Cs” of survival for intersex Zimbabweans which are correction through non-consensual surgeries, concealment by families, forced conformity to a binary, coercion by medical and state systems, attempts at conversion, and being branded as cursed. This framework, shaped by families, clinics, and churches, creates the foundational mismatch that leads to legal erasure.
This view is supported by legal experts.
The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) has consistently argued that the administrative refusal to issue correct documents or the creation of conflicting records effectively nullifies a citizen’s constitutional right to nationality, creating a state of de facto statelessness.
A cautious dawn: Policy shift offers hope
For Tendai, Nyasha, and the Masvingo child, the struggle for recognition has been solitary. But now, their plight is finally prompting a response at the highest levels of government.
According to the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission’s statement at the recently held 60th session of the UN Human Rights Council, the government has launched a concrete reform process. The Ministry of Justice is assessing legal gaps, and following initial meetings, held countrywide consultations in September 2025 to develop a specific legal framework.
For activists, this marks a watershed moment.
“It’s a step forward in acknowledging and protecting the most marginalised,” says Alessandrabree Chacha of Purple Royale. “This step to recognise our existence is much appreciated.”
Kuda Murisa of the Intersex Community of Zimbabwe notes: “We commend the Ministry for the positive steps already taken. The recent consultations were pivotal. We were greatly encouraged by the significant turnout of intersex persons who shared their experiences. However, this process also revealed a major gap, the profound secrecy about being intersex. Often, unless someone is connected to our community, they know very little about their own state.”
Queen Bee Chihera-Meki of Trans and Intersex Rising Zimbabwe adds: “This effort acknowledges the rights and dignity of intersex individuals. The proposed framework aims to address human rights violations including forced medical procedures and lack of legal identity recognition.”
The long road ahead
The consultations mark a critical step, but the path to a new law is long.
The Ministry of Justice must now draft a bill based on the input received, which then requires Cabinet approval, parliamentary review, and presidential assent, a process that can take years.
The proposed framework promises to address the violations that have devastated Tendai, Nyasha, and the Masvingo child. Yet for all the promise, the reform remains a blueprint.
The crucial question hangs in the air: Will the momentum from the consultations be enough to drive a bill through Zimbabwe’s complex legislative machinery?
For Tendai, still navigating borders with a passport that lies, and for Nyasha, watching their future recede, the promise of reform is measured against the enduring pain of the present.
The state has admitted the problem and taken its first steps.
Now, the world waits to see if it can finish the journey and create a Zimbabwe that truly recognises all of its people.
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