By John Chimunhu
When college sessions end, Thembi heads for the Hunters Lounge, a popular club in Harare’s seedy Avenues area.
To her friends, she is a dancer at the club, but to those who know her better, she is a high-class hooker.
Thembi does not deny this and, in an exclusive interview with News Of The South, said she was not alone.
“Many college girls are getting into marriages of convenience to gardeners, caretakers and others just to get some food and a place to stay near the college,” Thembi said. “So, for me, the choice was
simple. I had to use my dancing skills to get food and rent.”
Pressed further about her ‘dancing’, she railed against the authorities and her parents for neglecting to fund her education, thrusting her into the shadowy underworld.
“Now I am a pauper, at the mercy of any man who can pay me a few dollars for a meal and a place to sleep,” she disclosed, close to tears. “There is a lot of competition from other girls, too, and the
‘clients’ are now demanding unprotected sex. I have been treated for sexually transmitted infections many times. Now I fear I might have HIV but I am afraid of the result if I get tested.”
Apparently, Thembi is only one of thousands of college students in Zimbabwe trapped in a growing cycle of poverty affecting students at tertiary institutions. The recent world economic recession and a more than decade-old Western embargo, have left the country without access to vital donor funding for the essential education sector.
Coupled with this is a massive increase in the number of state institutions of higher learning without a corresponding increase in government
budgets.This has created a nightmare for the authorities faced with rising AIDS figures.
“Tertiary institutions are the peak of HIV infections,” says the HIV/AIDS coordinator in the Ministry of Higher Education, Evangelista Matipano. “Some of the major contributing factors are poverty, peer
pressure and drug abuse.”
Matipano said abuse of students by staff, the so-called “sexually transmitted degrees” syndrome was worrisome, in remarks quoted by a local publication.
“Students sexual abuse has become a cause for concern. We know of the ‘thigh for a pass’ in tertiary institutions whereby lecturers demand sex from students in exchange for high marks or other favours,” said Matipano.
The desperate university students have become victims of more than just gardener pimps and abusive lecturers. In Masvingo, a college was reported to have been turned into a near-brothel after being invaded by cash-rich gold panners. In Gweru, students offered regular sex to bus crews in exchange for free rides to college.
The National Aids Council has revealed that tertiary institutions have the highest rate of new HIV infections in Zimbabwe.
“It has been discovered that most new infections are starting at tertiary institutions,” said NAC coordinator Beauty Nyamwanza. She said the organisation had launched programmes to combat AIDS in universities.
Zimbabwe National Students Union president Gilbert Mutubuki acknowledged the shock NAC report. He said students were taking “desperate measures” to survive. He urged government to revive the
students grant scheme to fund higher education.
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