Of Vision 2022 and Slippery Slopes

For a country dreaming of joining the elite class of First World countries, Swaziland is fraught with an undesirable cocktail of social ills and two things are at the very centre of it all; religion and culture.

The two things we hold closest to our hearts as a country are the main reasons why the ‘First World by 2022’ will remain lofty a dream. An exciting rumour. Religion and Culture are not the cause, but they definitely are the reason why we fail to address these social ills adequately. I have said this somewhere, and don’t mind saying it again; much of the time we let religion and culture cloud our understanding of issues, hence our failure to design strategies to adequately address these issues.

Culture has been central a focus in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Swaziland. I love culture and do tolerate religion. Our affections for culture and religion ensures we are a society without a moral vacuum, but does not take away the problems that come with having an empty space where morals are supposed to be. Awareness is one thing, being willing to conform is another.

Case in point, sex work. It is an open secret; sex work does exist in Swaziland, in different ways! There is the widely-accepted ‘white collar’ type of sex work and the ‘blue collar’ type of sex work. 

The 'white collar' sex worker goes to work at her salaried 'day job' and does not publicly turn trick. She supplements her salary by 'earning' extra money for the rent, tuition and related fees, running her car and keeping her well supplied in expensive Brazilian hair weaves, and a few extras like the crossover party and etcetera by sleeping with one, two or more men regularly at the same time. She is in multiple concurrent sexual relationships – one of the key drivers of the epidemic in the country.

(Worth pointing out is this is not restricted to females only, the white collar type of sex work. Males are also playing the field – for commercial purposes. Whilst Swaziland is still struggling to come to grips with the whole idea that a man can be a sex worker, countries such as Uganda have already begun implementing strategies to reach out to male sex workers with information and services.)

The ‘blue collar’ sex worker, on the other hand, openly works in the sex industry; going to work in locations where her customers will find her and access her services at a fee – we’ve seen them at roadsides and street corners. Personally, I have no objection to people doing it. Well, that is as long as my family and those close to me stay as far away from it as possible, because of the dangers, especially the physical violence that come with the state protection for perpetrators of violence against ‘ blue collar’ sex workers.

Research emerging from certain parts of the world suggests that female university students are the fastest growing segment of the sex industry, which points to sex work being more an independent business choice than an issue of exploitation. Some of the women in the sex industry come from healthy, well-adjusted families, and decide they would rather work a few hours a week as a sex worker than work a low-paying job. Or do both. Whatever the case, it still is mostly a matter of choice. There is money to be made (so much for "ingubo ayinamali", LOL), and some sex-starved husbands to serve before they get back to the warzone that their bedrooms have become.

In Swaziland, sex work is illegal. Or rather, ‘blue collar’ sex, widely referred to as commercial sex (But, if you really think about it though, all sex is commercial!), is illegal. The laws that govern such are based largely on culture and religion than they are on sense/lucidity. Being illegal an industry, it follows that there are no supportive structures for those involved in it. Only jail awaits.

Now, consider this; the HIV prevalence amongst ‘blue collar’ sex workers in Swaziland is 70.3%. In English, this means 7 out of ten sex workers in Swaziland are HIV positive, more than double (31%) the prevalence in the general population for females in same age group (15-49). Of these, only 38.7 percent are receiving treatment from a health care provider. Given the nature of the sexual networks in this lovely country, this should be a cause for concern.

The restrictive laws are not helping at all as they now serve as a barrier, not only to ‘blue collar’ sex workers accessing required treatment, care and support services, but also to the country’s mooted move towards joining the elite club.

Sex workers, the ‘blue collar’ type, are classified as most-at-risk populations in as far as HIV infection is concerned, and it’s largely because of the laws. The same study from which the figures above were taken, the MARPS Bio-Behavioural Surveillance Survey (BSS, 2012), revealed that 123 (39.2%) of the sex workers interviewed reported to have ever been raped at some point, main culprits being one-time clients, family members, regular partner, regular client, and uniformed (police, military, security) officers.

Laws, along with social stigma, make it easy for predators to go after ‘blue collar’ sex workers. This is just one of the many structural risks that this particular group has to contend with on a daily basis. For the ‘white collar sex worker, life is generally easy. To her, and to society, hers is not sex work. She just earns extra income from being 'kept' by regular man-friends, some of whom have wives and other women. Condoms? Maybe in some but not all her relationships.

“It’s well-deserved. Anyone involved in such illicit acts deserves all the suffering that comes their way.” Common mutterings about the sex workers on the street corners and roadsides aren’t they?! The question we should be asking ourselves though is, those rapists, who do they go home to afterwards? It’s an Intersexions type of society this Swaziland of ours; our lives intersect in many mysterious ways.

Alfred Alcorn once said, “The moral high ground to which I aspired had turned into a slippery slope.” Perhaps we need to come to that realization as a country as well. This moral high ground, deeply rooted in religion and culture, is becoming very slippery by the day. 

Woza 2022!