ZANU PF Secretary for Women Affairs Mabel Chinomona has urged Zimbabwean women to stop using family-planning methods and have more children, arguing that the country needs a larger population of soldiers, farmers, doctors and nurses.
Chinomona, who is also President of the Senate, made the remarks at a recent Women’s League event in Murehwa West constituency, where she said Zimbabwe’s birth rate was falling to worrying levels.
“Women, please stop using family planning; please go and give birth,” said Chinomona.
She added: “Our soldiers are now few; we need farmers, doctors and nurses while you are busy swallowing those pills.”
The remarks amount to a direct appeal for women to abandon contraception in the name of population growth. Condoms are among the family-planning methods used to prevent pregnancy, while also protecting against HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. By telling women to stop using family planning, Chinomona’s message therefore points towards couples having sex without contraceptive protection in order to produce more children.
Although Chinomona did not talk about unprotected lula lula, however condoms are one of the most widely recognised contraceptive methods in Zimbabwe, and a woman generally becomes pregnant when sperm reaches an egg, most commonly after sex without a contraceptive method. In the Zimbabwean context, the call for women to stop using family planning carries a clear practical consequence: couples who follow it would be more likely to have unprotected sex and face unintended pregnancies.
Chinomona also criticised younger Zimbabweans who choose to have only one child and compared their decisions with the larger families of previous generations.
“We are supposed to build this country, yet you find children of this generation saying a single child is enough. How many siblings do you have?” she said.
Her remarks reflect a long-running concern within ZANU PF about Zimbabwe’s population size and fertility rate. The country’s total fertility rate is estimated at about 3.7 children per woman, down from about 6 children per woman in the 1990s. The figure remains above the global replacement level of about 2.1 children per woman, but the decline has been attributed to economic hardship, higher levels of education and easier access to family-planning services.
Chinomona said the state should help parents meet the cost of raising larger families.
“We will ask that government assist in raising our children. There is a country that is now paying women to give birth,” she said.
She dismissed concerns among parents about feeding more children, saying: “Some of you are worried about what those children will eat, but that is never an issue as children will eat what you eat at your homes.”
Zimbabwe does not currently provide a childcare subsidy of the kind available in countries such as South Africa. The cost of maternal care, school fees, food, transport and housing has placed increasing pressure on families, while many households depend on informal work or irregular earnings.
The country’s economic conditions provide a very different explanation for the falling birth rate from the one suggested by Chinomona. Humanitarian data show that macroeconomic instability has reduced household purchasing power, particularly in urban areas where food prices, transport costs and rents continue to consume a large share of family income. About 42 per cent of Zimbabwe’s population lives in extreme poverty, while 26.7 per cent of children are recorded as having stunted growth.
Food insecurity remains a concern in both rural and urban communities. Many households entered 2026 with limited ability to recover from earlier economic and climate shocks. High unemployment, limited opportunities for young people and the cost of raising children have made family size an economic decision as much as a personal one.
For many couples, the question is not whether they want a large family in principle, but whether they can afford another child. The cost of pregnancy, transport to health facilities, delivery, medicines, clothing, food and education begins before a baby is born and continues for years. Expensive maternal care has also been identified as one of the factors associated with the decline in births.
The call to abandon contraception also sits uneasily alongside Zimbabwe’s stated family-planning commitments. In November 2025, the country pledged an additional US$2.25 million a year for the procurement of contraceptives in 2026 and 2027. The pledge followed the procurement of contraceptives worth US$6.3 million from domestic resources since 2022.
Zimbabwe’s modern contraceptive prevalence rate stood at 68 per cent in 2021. Between 2018 and 2022, contraceptive use was credited with averting nearly 3.6 million unintended pregnancies, 918,000 unsafe abortions and 12,700 maternal deaths. Family planning has also been linked to safer spacing of pregnancies and better chances of avoiding high-risk births.
The present controversy has echoes of an earlier population debate involving former Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede. In 2014, Mudede was quoted as urging the Government of Zimbabwe to ban contraceptives. The remarks were made after he had reportedly spoken against contraception at an Africa Day event in May of that year, before making a further appeal for a government ban in July.
Mudede argued that contraceptives had negative side-effects on women and were a scheme by powerful nations to slow population growth in Africa. His comments were interpreted as encouraging the non-use of all contraceptives, including condoms, and raised concern about the possible effect on Zimbabwe’s HIV and sexually transmitted infection statistics.
The debate at the time also drew attention to the limits of the Registrar-General’s office, whose main responsibilities included issuing passports, birth certificates and death certificates. Family planning and contraceptive policy fell within the health sector, not the civil-registration system.
Health officials had previously described family planning as a measure that saves the lives of women and children and supports economic development. In 2014, the Ministry of Health said family planning was averting about 310,000 unintended pregnancies each year in Zimbabwe. It also projected that wider contraceptive use could save 15,000 mothers between 2014 and 2020 and prevent an average of 2,100 maternal deaths annually.
The ministry further said family planning was saving the lives of about 4,300 children each year by allowing couples to time pregnancies and avoid high-risk pregnancies. Those figures placed the issue in direct opposition to calls for women to stop using contraception simply to increase the population.
Mudede’s comments also came during a period when access to emergency contraception was under scrutiny. In one widely discussed case, a rape survivor failed to obtain emergency contraceptives in time after public officials did not ensure that she could access them promptly. The case brought national attention to the consequences of delays and gaps in reproductive-health services.
More than a decade later, the language has changed little. Chinomona has framed larger families as necessary for national development, military strength and the supply of workers. But parents facing empty shelves, unstable incomes and rising costs are being asked to accept a responsibility that the state has not fully matched with affordable healthcare, childcare support, food security and employment.
Her appeal has revived a question that has followed Zimbabwe’s population debate for years: whether the country needs more births, or better conditions for the people already living in it. For couples struggling under economic hardships that many citizens blame on ZANU PF’s mismanagement, corruption and poor governance, the answer is being shaped at household level, one family-planning decision at a time.