HARARE – Six months ago, 14-year-old Chipo Munyeza boarded a bus to go
from her rural home in Masvingo south-eastern Zimbabwe to Zimbabwe’s
bustling capital, Harare.
She travelled with friends who assured her she would be able to get a
job as a maid, enabling her to look after her impoverished siblings
back home.
Today, she is one of hundreds of girls, many as young as 13, who sell
their bodies in Harare’s seedy nightclubs, with their grubby neon signs
and crumbling, once glitzy, decor.
Critics blame growing prostitution in Zimbabwe on President Robert
Mugabe, whose policies, they say, have turned the nation, which was
once an exporter of food, into a beggar state with unprecedented levels
of unemployment.
Small, with the short, kinky hair of a typical Zimbabwean girl, Chipo
does not fit the picture of a sex worker. Yet she dances suggestively
to rumba music blaring from the disco at the popular Liz, the Queen
Elizabeth Hotel, in an attempt to attract men, who come from far and
wide to pick up girls from this bustling bar.
Nightclubs like the Liz are always packed with girls drawn from the dirt-poor townships around Harare.
In the dimly-lit pub with its purple fluorescent lights and deafening
music, prostitutes sell the only thing they can. Teenage girls far
outnumber the men – the pub teems with half-naked girls gyrating to the
beat and available for a price.
Bouncers at the gate no longer bother to check the age of what one guard called these "veteran hookers".
"It’s the way they have chosen for themselves," he said. "It’s
pointless trying to stop them from getting in – some of these kids even
pay us bribes to let them in."
Chipo demands 10 US dollars, or 100 South African rand, for sex. She
refuses to accept payment in the rapidly devaluing Zimbabwe dollar.
She tells IWPR she was persuaded to enter prostitution after realising
it was the only way she could survive the harsh realities of city life.
Humanitarian agencies say more and more professional women in Zimbabwe
are earning a living by selling sex, with even married women joining
the trade.
Thelma Msika, a civil rights activist, told IWPR that the desperate
conditions in the country are forcing women into prostitution in
increasing numbers.
"While the government and several non-governmental organisations are
trying to check the spread of HIV through prostitution, a combination
of poverty and ignorance is frustrating [these] efforts," said Msika.
"These sex workers depend on the profession for a living but we must
not lose focus; we must realise that it is the men who are actually
creating the demand. We obviously urge the sex workers to be creative
and find alternative means of survival, but in these economic
circumstances it’s a tough decision."
Zimbabwe’s deepening economic crisis has taken its toll on the
capital’s once vibrant nightlife. But some men who have the cash trek
to the myriad bars in the city centre to take advantage of young girls
driven into the oldest profession by the desperate economic situation.
"Economic crisis? What economic crisis?" asked a foreign-currency
dealer, who would only give his middle name, Joshua, for fear of his
wife finding out about his carousing.
"Everything is fine," he said, seated on a peeling plush couch surrounded by several teenage prostitutes.
While many young girls work in seedy nightclubs, some approach truck drivers and others go after the rich.
The "highway girls", as they are called, are often picked up by
cross-border truck drivers – a practice the health authorities say is
feeding an AIDS epidemic that kills 2,500 Zimbabweans each week.
"I have to do this because there are no jobs, and the income is a bit
higher than selling vegetables," said Rumbidzai, who has worked as a
prostitute for two years in a parking bay for heavy trucks in Harare.
"I know there is AIDS, and I insist on condoms."
The highway girls are such a common sight they have been immortalised
in a popular song, Madhara Egonyeti, or Elderly Truckers, which pleads
with drivers to refrain from having sex with young girls.
Across town, in the red light district of Avenues, a leafy suburb which
looks clean by day, yet turns into a prostitutes’ lair at night,
half-naked hookers line the streets.
Tracy, who describes herself as "a qualified teacher who gave up her
profession to become a professional hooker", works on Fife Avenue, a
main road.
Her favourite spot is near the Tiperary Night Club, an upmarket pub
patronised by Harare’s rich, a stone’s throw from the flat she shares
with her sister. She said she is not too picky about her clientele, who
are generally upper class.
Among her clients, she counts rich and powerful men, including
politicians, government ministers, priests and "anyone with US dollars,
seeking pleasures of the flesh", she tells IWPR. "As long as they have
money, I deal with them. I don’t really care," she said.
She turned to prostitution because she could not live off her teachers’ salary, she said.
=Any prostitute found wandering in a public place, behaving in an
indecent manner or soliciting passersby can be jailed, once convicted,
for up to two months. Jail time may or may not include hard labour. A
magistrate can also impose a fine.
Female police officers have often posed as prostitutes in a bid to nail potential clients.
A recent operation, codenamed "No to Prostitution" netted 12
kerb-crawlers, including top businessmen, with police naming the
offenders in the state press.
However, the operation was immediately stopped by the authorities,
given its potential for exposing and embarrassing top government
officials well-known for picking up young girls for sex.- IWPR