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Jonathan Muzuva and Takudzwa Mutsvairo
Sexual attitudes and orientation of young adults in universities and colleges have of late shown more inclination towards premarital sex than 20 to 30 years ago. Sex is now regarded as the “in thing”. Recently on social media and in the Press there has been a rise in reports to do with sexual infidelity at tertiary institutions triggered by the report that 47 percent of those who went for voluntary HIV and AIDS testing and counselling at the oldest university in Zimbabwe, University of Zimbabwe, tested positive.
Whether these statistics represent the reality on the ground of the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases in tertiary institutions is a debate for another day.
What is certain though is the high infidelity and pre-marital sex engagement among university students. It is therefore necessary to analyse some of the factors leading to this infidelity reports.
Different factors come into play to create a stimuli and response to the students; at college one cannot but notice the high number of inter-generational relationships which mainly affects female students as compared to their male counterparts, former graduates who now would have made it out in life come back to use their financial muscle to try to lure female students into relationships. On the other hand these girls living in harsh economic conditions coupled with high the expense of college life tend to fall for these elderly men, since there can provide better financial assistance than college boys termed as UBAs (Unable to Buy Anythings).
The prevalence of concurrent sexual partnerships among married and unmarried persons has increased in spite of the equally high prevalence of HIV/AIDS. One might start to wonder why the increase? One of the major reasons behind such concurrent sexual relationships are the definite advantages in the form of money and material goods that usually accompany such relationships.
These have led to a situation where young female students see themselves as consumerist entrepreneurs and an active agent who gives sex in exchange of gifts and other modernist items and deliberately exploits the partner(s) in the relationship. It’s not always the case that sex is exchanged due to poverty, although poverty-driven sex exchanges cannot be underestimated.
It is now common to find female students exchanging sex with “sugar daddies” for fashionable clothing and gadgets that confer a certain status and represent a sophisticated lifestyle around campus. This “sugar daddy” culture has contributed to an elevated risk of HIV for young women as they are exposed to older men who are more likely to be HIV positive.
The bargaining power of these young women for safe sex is highly compromised by their weak socio-economic status and the result is the infection of young female students with the virus. Female students who have relationships with sugar daddies still have to maintain a façade of normality around campus, thus they need boyfriends who are their age mates.
These college boys normally referred to as “UBAs” are then put at a high risk of contracting HIV from their promiscuous partners. Furthermore, the young women are developing the attitude that sex relations with someone who has a main relationship with another person is not in itself a disincentive for engaging in a sexual relationship with that person.
This implies that the fact that a male partner is already in another sexual relationship does not in itself discourage the young female from engaging in sexual relations with that male partner. This attitude fuels the setting up and maintenance of massive concurrent relationships provided that the female student is economically benefiting from the relationship.
This can be described as a “culture of death”, a tendency that is extant in the universities whereby young female students are open to sugar daddy practices, sexual experimentation, prostitution on campus, unprotected casual sex, gender violence and multiple concurrent partnerships. These tendencies are exacerbated by university students living away from home and hence away from the direct influence of older adults from the various families.
Some parents don’t even know where their children stay during the course of the semester. All they do is send money for rent and food which most of the times is not enough to cover all the expenses. The involvement of young men with several women at the same time is promoted by the view of masculinity that gives respect to male students who have more than one sexual partner.
Concurrent sexual relationships themselves have implications for HIV infection and prevention. This has seen young male students who for various reasons have resorted to the services of commercial sex workers, thus exposing themselves to HIV/AIDS. Some young male students have actually gone a step further to get themselves involved in sexual relationships with sugar-mummies, some the age of their grandmothers for economically benefiting relationships.
The sexual relationship is usually accompanied by unprotected sex, thereby putting the male students at the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, young male students engage in “trophy hunting” (Muparamoto 2010), a practice where they try to define their masculinity by sleeping with as many girls as possible.
The spirit of hunhu/ubuntu is fast fading away. One may talk about different strategies in trying to deal with these issues, but the panacea only lies in a behavioural approach where attitudes are changed; revisiting our ways of hunhu/Ubuntu; going back to the days when premarital sex was abominable as compared to these days were youths fear pregnancy more than they do HIV and AIDS.
Online Reporter