There is this chap who is gunning for a very high position in government through the coming election, but no names please.
There is a file on him. He is a sex pest. It emerged a few years ago that this dude was in the habit of taking young girls from the University of Zimbabwe and getting them booked into four- to five-star hotels.
He was taking advantage of the fact that he mixed with so many young people. He was powerful and has the money, so the deal was cut out for him. This politician used runners and, once in a while, pitched up at campus.
He might have naively assumed no-one except those involved would know about his sick shenanigans. But then, you know how it is.
Young people are very excitable, so they will drop your name at the drop of a hat.
You may be tempted to say, but heh, these college girls are above 18, so they are adults and adults have the freedom to make their own choice on who to date or sleep with. Nice try! The truth is that these girls are just as tender as a toddler in nappies.
They are still dependent on their parents or guardians. When they go on semester break, they don’t go to homes of their own, but straight back to the family houses where they are fed, clothed, and given money for data, not to mention the college fees and rentals. Some of those that are preyed on by the powerful sex perverts live off-campus with their families and they are as dependent on their guardians as a girl in second grade.
So, when you go back to the case of the politician above, there is no way in which he was ever going to justify his base forays on the basis of the age of majority. Whoever wrote the law to say an 18 YO is an adult who must do an independent life is as blasphemous as Makandiwa telling us he is more gifted than God.
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Pity that whole adults with girl children of their own and grannies with daughter who have their own daughters go to Parliament, pass such a law and go back home to snore.
Besides those laws that are made by the parliamentarians and written down—statutory law-and what we commonly refer to as common law, we have social rules and social mores. We have ethics too. It’s a no, no for a whole grandfather to be preying on a young woman above 18 just because she is financially vulnerable or simply greedy.
The politician I’m talking about is, therefore, morally corrupt. Worse, he is someone who has held public office and wants to continue doing that, at a very high level. Even worse, he is married, so he is a sinner. It’s really shocking that he is still thinking of holding public office.
But he is not alone. There are so many other politicians, public office holders and wealthy individuals who have turned tertiary institutions into hunting grounds. The girls are like the lamb to the slaughter.
You can understand this trend whereby colleges are fast turning into brothels, so to speak, in several ways. Given the prevailing economic situation, parents and guardians are struggling to raise the money to get their children and dependents into college and keep them there.
So, while they are going to celebrate that their children and dependents have managed to get into college, there is another problem.
The parents are scraping through, so the students will have to also scrape through on a day-to-day basis.
They can’t have as many or as good meals as they wish. They need airtime and data for study and all those other naughty things that young people do when you are not looking.
The girls need the odd hairdo and bits of good clothes that the money they have been given by their parents won’t be able to buy.
Then there is peer pressure. A lot of young guys at college are falling into this pit. They want to look as nice as the next girl. They want to be seen eating pizza every other day. The pests know all this, so they move.
Landlords don’t make the situation any better. You know by now that universities and colleges—all of them across the country—suffer accommodation crises. As a result, students are being forced to look for accommodation from private house-owners.
These merchants are charging steep rentals on students who are largely living under squashed conditions.
If a blesser comes and offers a girl student a full flat, the temptation may be too hard to resist.
But then, blessers don’t have permanent interests and will move on sooner or later, so the vulnerable girls have to find new blessers to fund their upkeep.
This goes on and on and, by the time the female student finishes college, she has turned into a pro.
What’s particularly disturbing is that cartels are springing up to make profits in this newly found market. Some of you might know by now, but there are syndicates of pimps that are sprouting in Harare and elsewhere.
These pimps are, in the full sense, middle people. They approach young girls and recruit them. They then look for clients who pay them to “play” with the girls.
The girls are given small money for their services, either on a monthly or weekly basis. This money is a pittance, but, for the desperate girls, it’s good enough.
If they will get tips after service, the better for them.
It’s also emerging that popular and upmarket night clubs are cashing in on the young girls. The clubs—again no names, please—use agents, most of who are, ironically, women, to get the students who are in turn linked up with blessers who turn them into sex slaves.
Of course, you are already used to the story of male lecturers demanding favours from female students for good marks and grades, but it’s really nothing compared to the emerging exploitation whereby high-office and well-heeled men are taking advantage of these fragile souls.
This is time government, civil society, parents, college administrations and churches stood up to stem the scourge before it gets out of hand.
- Tawanda Majoni writes in his personal capacity and can be contacted on [email protected]
