Who is the hunter?

 

Photo credit - Bulawayo HOT BABES

On a recent trip to South Africa, I passed through Harare and had the misfortune or good fortune; depending on context, of spending the night in a lodge in the avenues area. The guy running the lodge insisted that he did not allow prostitutes on his premises and I laughed to myself: How else can a lodge in the city make money if it doesn’t allow those selling and buying sex to use the premises?

 A lot of stories have been told about that part of Harare and many are of brothels and semi-nude women on the streets: Sex is a highly sought after commodity and it seems the business is headquartered in the avenues area of Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe. There is a lot of exaggeration of course, but one fact remains; there is a lot of trading of sex on the streets of the avenues area of Harare.

            I took my inquisitive writer’s mind onto the streets to witness for myself the seemingly brisk business of selling sex. Along Herbert Chitepo Avenue, expensive cars slowly drive up and down and some are just parked on the side of the road: There are no prostitutes in sight. And the owners of the expensive cars are hunting; hunting for the sex that the mostly young women sell. Where are the prostitutes? I soon realised that they were hiding in the shadows, in gateways and behind closed gates of lodges that have been turned into brothels. They cannot openly sell their commodity on the streets as there are constant police raids. On the day that I took to the streets of Harare – Saturday the 6^th of July 2013 – there had been a particularly idiotic police raid: The police had raided bars and nightclubs and arrested all the women in there: Were they working on the assumption that all women who go into bars and nightclubs are prostitutes? Maybe the police raids explained why the women were so scarce on the streets and the men were almost frantic in their search of sex that is generally sold at US$10 for short-time. How long is short-time? Five minutes? Until the man ejaculates; and for some men that is one minute.

            I walked further down Herbert Chitepo Avenue and turned into 3^rd Street and there I found the scene I had been searching for all night: Many young women in very short skirts and dresses. They were braving the cold and running towards any car that stopped: I can safely conclude that the majority of men in that part of town were looking for sex and the majority of women if not all women there were selling sex. The sheer number of cars in that small section of town was shocking and the men were on the hunt and so were the women: How else can one explain the skimpy dressing on a cold winter night? Why do they do it?

            Women flood the streets in skimpy clothing in a desperate bid to make a living: There are no jobs and economic conditions are harsh and the women have decided that if men want to buy sex, they will sell it. The women’s participation in the brisk business of selling and buying sex can easily be explained. It is the men’s participation that remains a mystery: Why do men pay at least US$10 for five minutes of sex when they will go and have as much sex as they want for free from their wives or girlfriends? And why do the police bother arresting prostitutes? Surely it’s a ‘problem’ that will always be with us and its better and more logical to embrace it and regulate it than try and stop it. No matter how difficult it is made to find sex, men will always hunt it down and find it and the women will always sell sex because the factors that force women into selling sex will always be there till the end of time.