The loss of land and a gender hierarchy, among other factors, are
forcing some young girls – with parental consent – to forsake school and
turn to sex work on diamond mines in the Marange region of eastern
Zimbabwe.
“Commercial sex among girls as young as 12 years has become a natural
way out of poverty for these children and their families. They are using
it as a coping mechanism in the wake of the negative effects on
household livelihoods caused by mining activities in Marange,” Melanie
Chiponda, programme manager of the Chiadzwa Community Development Trust
(CCDT), an NGO, told IRIN.
Nationally, about 2.2 million people are faced by food insecurity,
but food shortages and rising levels of poverty in communities in
Manicaland province’s diamond fields are being attributed to the
“resource curse”.
In 2008, artisanal miners were flushed from the Marange diamond fields by government security forces,
and the state then issued commercial mining licences. Seven companies
now mine the 60,000 hectare fields, but proximity to wealth has
undermined rather than improved livelihoods.
“The mines took away pastures and farmland from the locals... This
worsened hunger and affected household income, as families traditionally
sold some of their crops and livestock to raise money for food, school
fees and other basic needs,” Chiponda said. Local communities have also
been excluded
from low-skilled jobs on the mines because companies have branded them
as lazy and disobedient, and rely on migrant workers from other
provinces instead.
"Unfortunately, girls become part of the dirty game. Some of the girls get food handouts as payment for sex"
“Thousands of married men live in [single-sex] hostels at the mines and
women are not allowed inside them. Given that most of the men come from
faraway places, they end up resorting to commercial sex and,
unfortunately, girls become part of the dirty game. Some of the girls
get food handouts as payment for sex,” Stella Washaya, 50, a Marange
villager and volunteer counsellor for vulnerable young girls, told IRIN.
Mine companies have now banned villagers from selling their produce, but
between 2006 and 2008, artisanal miners stimulated the local economy by
buying foodstuffs from the community. The companies also have a policy
of confiscating livestock roaming onto their concessions, and mining
activities have destroyed forests. In times of food insecurity,
livestock are seen as a last resort, and wild fruits from the forests
are eaten or sold along highways.
Freeman Bhoso, executive director of the Zimbabwe Natural Resources
Dialogue Forum (ZNRDF), an NGO advocating sustainable and equitable
exploitation of mineral resources, told IRIN that child sex work was a
“natural offshoot” of the community’s exclusion from the diamond fields.
“Communities are not benefiting from the exploitation of resources, but
are getting further impoverished. As a result, household members are
forced to engage in activities - some of them life-threatening - that
guarantee them bare survival. Child commercial sex is a symptom of
poverty,” he said.
Washaya said, “Commercial sex among young girls has become a social
crisis here. There are several thousands homesteads in Marange and I
would say one in every five of these has at least one [girl] teenager
engaging in sex for money.”
A nurse at one of the few health centres in the area, who declined to be
identified, told IRIN: “We attend to at least 20 girls a month who have
contracted STIs [sexually transmitted infections]. The men… insist on
unprotected sex, a trend worsened by the fact that there are no
programmes designed to educate them against the risky practice. Many
young girls have dropped out of school due to unwanted pregnancies.”
"Now that I have a child, the burden has grown and sex with men is the easiest way to get some money"
In Marange, the prevalence of Apostolic religious communities advocating
a boy’s education ahead of a girl’s, has seen some parents encouraging
their daughters to enter the commercial sex trade to support the family,
Washaya said.
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