Online Reporter
Raymond Jaravaza, [email protected]
THE chill of the pre-dawn air did little to deter the two young women. Their outfits, tight and revealing, offered scant protection against the cold as they were designed to catch the eye as opposed to ward off the weather elements.
One after the other, they rapped on the driver’s side of a haulage truck parked at Gwayi Shopping Centre, a roadside stop on the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls highway.
The clock edged towards the small hours of Friday morning and Gwayi’s nightclubs pulsed with life, music and laughter echoing, while outside, the parked trucks awaited the dawn’s reluctant arrival.
A cluster of women drifted among the parked trucks, the makeshift truck stop, a temporary haven for a dozen or more haulage vehicles, both local and foreign.
After persistent knocks on four different trucks, a woman finally found her mark; a driver relented and she slipped inside. Her companion, undeterred, continued her search, scanning the line of vehicles, hoping for another open door.
A number of truck stops have sprung up along the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls route and these include one at Amakhosi Service Station in Bulawayo, Bernice Business Centre, Insuza Shopping Centre and Kenmur Business Centre in St Lukes. The next truck stops are at Lupane Business Centre, Jotsholo Business Centre and Gwayi Shopping Centre.
The Saturday Chronicle’s investigation into prostitution rings involving truck drivers took the news crew to Cross Dete Business Centre where there is another truck stop. The women have taken soliciting clients to a new level, an employee at a nightclub at Gwayi Shopping Centre told the Saturday Chronicle.
“They knock on doors of trucks and openly tell the drivers they are sex workers. For them, it’s all about business and how much they can earn each night,” said the female employee.
Norman Ngulube, a barman, said that some of the sex workers rent back rooms from homeowners in a suburb just behind the truck stop.
“Prostitution has become a way of life here at Gwayi Shopping Centre. What’s worrying is that even young girls have joined the trade, selling their bodies to truck drivers who always have cash and spend freely,” Ngulube said.
As another truck pulled into a dusty and muddy track that has been turned into a temporary rest area, a teenage girl emerged from the shadows and began walking slowly between the parked trucks. Her attempt to attract a client also fails, and she abandons the mission, deciding to go into a nightclub to try her luck.
More and more trucks arrive, and soon the small, dusty parking bay is congested.
“On a busy night over 30 trucks stop here overnight, and they usually start leaving as early as 4am. The sex workers sleep during the day and only work after dark,” said Ngulube.
Jotsholo Business Centre is next to the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls Highway and during the day, is usually quiet and passive but sharply transforms into a notorious hub for prostitution as dusk approaches. The news crew observed girls, some as young as 15, roaming the business centre at night.
The place has virtually been turned into a red-light district. In fact, the area has become a paedophile’s paradise, where older men, especially truck drivers, prey on vulnerable teenage girls.
At Cross Dete Business Centre, one of the several truck stops visited by the Saturday Chronicle at night, a woman we will call Mary (for the purposes of this article) said her charges vary depending on whether the client wants to take a drive with her or if their business is concluded in the truck.
“When we do our business in the truck, we call it a short time. When the driver asks me to join him on a trip to Hwange and back, that is a full night. A short time is US$5, and a full night is US$30,” said Mary.
She said she rents a house at Cross Dete Business Centre but entertains the truck drivers in their vehicles.
“I don’t want to expose my two young children to the type of business I do for a living. My younger sister knows what I do and takes care of the children in my absence but I don’t want her near where the trucks park.”
Mary said she doesn’t want her younger sister to be enticed by the money that truck drivers flash around to lure young girls into sleeping with them. She pointed at a young girl who she said joined the commercial sex trade earlier this year.
“That girl stopped going to school and joined her older sister in January.”
A study conducted by the Zimbabwe National Council for the Welfare of Children between 2015 and 2016, revealed that truck drivers plying major routes such as the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls and the Beitbridge-Chirundu highway are fuelling child prostitution by targeting school children and teenage sex workers.
The International Labour Organisation in 2010 launched a project on Economic Empowerment and HIV Vulnerability Reduction along Transport Corridors in Southern Africa in a bid to tackle HIV/Aids through empowering sex workers so that they start self-income generating projects. The project seeks to respond to the HIV/Aids pandemic through economic empowerment in the transport sector through a strategic approach of mobilising co-operatives and community-based organisations.
The ILO says the major thrust of the programme is to mobilise the tripartite constituents and other strategic partners to contribute to the reduction of HIV infections and mitigation of the impact of Aids through sustainable prevention, improved livelihood strategies, access to care and support structures, and initiatives involving affected grassroots communities and transport sector workers and their families.
