Sex workers yearn for clean money

Comment & Analysis
BY INDIANA CHIRARA A story on the area popularly known as the Avenues and Harare’s night life can never be complete without a reference to commercial sex workers. The sight of semi-naked women lining up the streets of the residential area adjacent to the capital’s central business district does not raise eyebrows anymore.

Many people believe the women selling their bodies in these places do it out of choice. But 37-year-old Patience Ndlovu from Epworth, whose mother died while she was only three months old blames it on her upbringing.

“I was raised by my uncles and during those days I was abused sexually and physically but I had no one to turn to for protection,” Ndlovu said. “I never went to school and up to now I can’t read or write.”

 

Ndlovu says she was forced into an early marriage with a Mozambican national and they had six children. Married life gave her a chance to compensate for the happiness she did not enjoy when growing up but it was soon to end with her husband’s death.

 

“When my husband died the problems returned and this time it was worse because I had children to look after,” she said.

A concerned neighbour gave her capital to start a business selling airtime but it also collapsed after municipal police confiscated her wares.

“That is when I started to make a living through selling my body and I have not turned back since,” Ndlovu said.

“I am into prostitution but my heart and soul are not there.

“Men at times force us to do inhuman things because we will be desperate for the money.”

She said some men offer to pay more for the services if they don’t use protection but this would be at the risk of contracting HIV. Ndlovu, who leads an Aids support group known as Team, based in the sprawling township is now determined to take fellow sex workers out of the streets.

The group, made up of HIV-positive sex workers, wants to start income generating projects that will help them earn a decent living and also discourage those still trapped in the world’s oldest profession.

She said such an initiative would also go a long way in helping reduce the spread of HIV.

“I am begging anyone who can assist with capital so that we can start our own business,” she said.

“My first born is 17 and it really hurts me that he sees what I am doing and I am also worried about  the clients’ wives who are getting infected.”

A member of the group Farirai Gororo (36), a widow with four children said given a choice, she would quit commercial sex work.

What touches commercial sex workers like Ndlovu and Gororo is the plight of children like Tariro Manhenga, who has become a guardian at 16. Manhenga’s mother was a commercial sex worker in Epworth and is now seriously ill at Parirenyatwa Hospital.

Tariro has to take care of four siblings and they go without food most of the time. Zimbabwe National Network of People Living with Aids (ZNNP+), which is working with the Team support group said a lot still needed to be done to end prostitution in Zimbabwe.

“However resources are limiting us as we currently don’t have enough money to give them capital so that they will be able to take care of their families,” said ZNNP+ provincial co-ordinator Musa Makondo.