BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE -- Locked in a filthy cell that was built for eight inmates, but filled with more than 25 women, Nyasha Maphosa, 32, a sex worker based in the town of Gokwe in the Midlands province, writhes in agony as the torture of the previous night takes its toll on her diminutive figure. She has endured 48 hours of detention after being picked up by the Zimbabwe Republic Police patrol team. The charge: loitering for the purposes of prostitution.
At her shabby one bedroom cottage, a day after her release from detention, Maphosa relives her ordeal, berating the police officers for their cruelty.
“I was just leaving the pub with two female friends when a mounted patrol team ordered us to stop for questioning,” says Maphosa. “Two of the officers were familiar to me because they were my casual clients,” she claims. "Initially I thought they wanted to do business. I was surprised when they handcuffed us and took us to the charge office,” Maphosa added.
At the charge office, Maphosa and her friends were told that they were under arrest for loitering for the purposes of prostitution. No statement was recorded by the police. Maphosa denies any allegation that she had broken the law. And, she says her stay in custody was horrific. Police officers would occasionally visit the cell and take her and her friends to another office where they would ridicule them and order them to perform demeaning and painful acts, such as demonstrating sexual acts, sleeping on wet floors and forcing them to relieve themselves in the presence of the officers.
“At one point during the night, a male constable took us into an office. He said that since we were prostitutes, he wanted us to show him how we do it with our clients,” claims Maphosa.
She says that she and her friends were also ordered to crawl on the floor where sand had been scattered, an ordeal that lasted for nearly 30 minutes.
“After performing the degrading acts in front of the police officers, we were taken back to the cell,” she says.
During that same night Maphosa says that some woman constables visited the cell and started to call her and her friends all sorts of names, scolding them for infecting men with sexually transmitted diseases and spreading HIV.
A spokesman from the Gokwe Central Police Station would not comment on Maphosa’s case. When contacted, the commanding officer referred the matter to the national police chief spokesperson, who said he was not available for comment.
After two days of physical, emotional and verbal attacks, Maphosa and her friends were released without formal charges filed against them. Maphosa says she would like to file a complaint against the officers who tormented her, but there is no law in Zimbabwe to protect sex workers from violence or abuse. And the practice of mistreating sex workers is widespread.
“There is nowhere to report. All over the country police officers treat us in this way. They harass us willy-nilly, they force us to have sex with them for free and if we refuse, they arrest us,” says Maphosa.
Maphosa and her friends are not the only sex workers in Zimbabwe who have suffered brutality at the hands of the police. Sex work is widespread in Zimbabwe where the majority of sex workers are young women. There are also some men, old women and young boys who engage in sex work. Almost every sex worker in the country has suffered some form of physical, psychological, verbal or sexual abuse.
Print
