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Extract from The Dynamics of Sex Work
GAD Talk Bulletin, Vol3, May 2002
Zimbabwe Women's Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN)
May 2002

Sex workers and HIV/AIDS

• The spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), which increase their susceptibility to HIV/AIDS, as their power to negotiate for safer and protected sex may be weak. In many communities in Zimbabwe, SW has been blamed for the spread of AIDS.
• Violence and abuse by men who are drunk, unwilling to use condoms or unwilling to pay for services.

As a result of the above the numbers of HIV positive sex workers is considerably higher than the general population. In Zimbabwe while the HIV infection is estimated at 25% it is as high as 86% among sex workers.

Their vulnerability is compounded by the fact that the sex workers are difficult to reach with prevention, care and support interventions and generally they do not receive public sympathy and are often harassed by the police. The marginalisation of the sex workers by society has also led to the health workers being judgmental and unreceptive to those women.

Law on Sex workers
In Zimbabwe Sex work is illegal, as in many countries. As stipulated in the Miscellaneous Offences Act Chapter 9:15 and the Sexual Offences Act Chapter 9:21 Both Acts refer to sex workers as prostitutes and ignore the-socio economic issues around SW. In the past some people have advocated that Sex work be legalized with the practice subjected to controls to ensure that sex workers do not pass on sexually transmitted diseases and that young persons are not recruited as sex workers.

It is illegal for a Sex worker to solicit for the purpose of prostitution in a public place. This offence is also contained in the Miscellaneous Offences Act (Chapter 9:15) (1). This makes it an offence for any person to loiter or be in a public place for the purpose of prostitution or solicitation.

The policy in the Sexual Offences Act tries to suppress prostitution without actually making the act of having sexual intercourse with the Sex worker illegal.

The Sexual Offences Act makes it an offence to live on the earnings from a brothel e.g. leasing ones house to someone who will use it as a brothel. The maximum sentence for such an offence is a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment for a period not exceeding two years or both fine and imprisonment.

It is a criminal offence to traffic women and young persons for the purposes of sexual activities so is the detaining of a person to detain another in a brothel or other place against his or her will. The two offences both attract a fine of fifty thousand dollars or maximum of ten years imprisonment or both fine and imprisonment.

Some further thoughts
ZWRCN sees a very clear link between all the dynamics of Sex work be they economic, social, political, cultural and women’s powerless and lowly status in our societies. Sex work clearly shows just how marginalized – even citizen less women are. When women’s voices and concerns are marginalized from the mainstream of development, when they cannot claim rights provided them to safe life and livelihoods, then matters that directly affect them, and push them to a life of sex working because they are women living in a patriarchal system that allows the purchase of sex from women but won’t seek solutions to the gender inequalities that are the root causes of sexing, it makes women very vulnerable to abuse.

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