With the economic conditions in Zimbabwe getting worse by the day thousands of young Zimbabweans are daily finding their way to South Africa with the hope of getting a job and making a living.
As the old saying goes the grass is not always greener on the other side, the once City of Gold Johannesburg which used to absorb many Zimbabweans into the job market has also dried up. Jobs are now very hard to come by in South Africa as ZimEye.com reveals, forcing the millions of Zimbabweans in the country to find alternative means of survival.
For most young Zimbabwean women, the solution has always been easy as they resorted to becoming commercial sex workers. Most ladies of the night in inner Johannesburg, Pretoria and Capetown are Zimbabweans, some highly qualified professionals who could not make a living back home due to President Robert Mugabe’s failed government.
There is beyond this, a new trend of Zimbabweans trying to make a living in South Africa. Several young Zimbabwean men are roaming up market Johannesburg night spots as commercial gay sex workers.
ZimEye.com met up with several young Zim men at a night spot in Rivonia north of Johannesburg over the Christmas holiday.
In an all revealing interview with ZimEye.com the young men revealed that the number of Zimbabweans going into gay prostitution is increasing every day as job opportunities fail in Johannesburg.
According to one young man from Harare who preferred to be called Thandi, he was brought into the trade by a friend who has been practising it since 2010 during the FIFA World Cup.
“Thandi” claims that there is a huge number of fellow Zimbabweans plying the trade in Johannesburg some without even their immediate families knowing what they do for a living.
“I stay with my wife and kids in Beria and she doesn’t know what job I do here in Rivonia, as far as she knows I work at a night club four times a week,” he said.
A colleague of Thandi who calls himself Bongie claims that he has also been in the business since 2012 and has managed to buy himself a car and build a house back home in Bulawayo.
The four men interviewed who are all between the ages of 26 and 32, claim that the industry is highly paying as they can make up to R15,000 (fifteen thousand) every month.
“Thembi”also from Harare says that the gay prostitutes are actually more demanded than the conventional ladies.
” There is a higher demand for us men than ladies in these high profile areas and most of our clients are very rich professional people both black and white and even politicians, ” he said.
“Some of them are out in newspapers talking bad about gays but at night they come here running offering huge amounts of money for our service,” he added.
Tich, who is using his real name in the trade, says that he has been in the business since the World Cup in 2010. He says when he started it he was working as a temporary barman at a club in Fourways in Johannesburg and was given an offer of R15 000 for three days of escort and gay sex by a white man from the USA and has never looked back on the business which he claims to be highly paying.
The four young men all put the blame of their predicament on President Mugabe’s government for failing to provide them with job opportunities back home. The men claim that there are hundreds more of Zimbabwean men in the same trade all because they can’t get jobs in South Africa and have to resort to being “men of the night” just to make ends meet.
“Some are not out here in the streets my brother, but stay in known gay rooms where they are doing it as a job with a weekly wage,” said Tich. “It’s for the money not the love for it. I have a wife and children to take care of back home but can’t get a job so I have to think of ways of feeding my family.”
President Mugabe is a known fighter against gays and lesbians who he frequently refers to as being worse than dogs and pigs. Several of his cabinet ministers and senior party officials have however been rumoured to be heavily involving themselves in gay relationships.
Zimbabwean laws prohibit gays and lesbian marriages and have come under heavy criticism from activists backing the trade. In South Africa the relationships are practised legally and people are allowed even to marry.