Street boys in Bulawayo are reportedly being targeted for sexual exploitation by well-connected businesspeople who allegedly harvest their semen for suspected ritual practices believed to increase wealth and influence.
According to social workers and child rights activists working with street-based children, boys under the age of 18 are lured with food, money, and drugs before being abused.
Some are reportedly forced to engage in sexual acts with women in parked vehicles while their semen is collected in condoms, allegedly for ritual use.
Others are taken to private homes, made to bathe in tubs, and served food suspected to be laced with drugs and then abused.
Best Ndlovu, a child protection activist and social worker with the Thuthuka programme under Scripture Union Zimbabwe, shared disturbing details of the abuse with journalists during a recent site visit organised by the National AIDS Council (NAC). Said Ndlovu:
The boy child is abused by individuals, or the abuse happens amongst themselves where they sexually abuse each other, or are sexually abused by businesspersons, which of late is trending.
The business persons want sperm from them, to use for their businesses.
A child will tell us during our quarterly sessions on HIV and SRH that a person will come and say, ‘I have my wife here, please sleep with her’ and they sleep with her in the back of the car and the business person will be in front.
What he does is to change condoms and give them to the boys. The businessperson will tell one boy to look for three boys and give them money.
They are taken to places where they wash in tubs and these children are drugged and you don’t know what happens after that.
When one boy is finished having sex, the businessperson takes the condom. When the boys are three, you know the person has three condoms.
The business person will first feed them, we don’t know what they are fed but the boys will tell you that they started ‘feeling dizzy and don’t know what happens but will be enjoying’ because they are hungry on the streets.
The social worker further explained that many street-based boys are too afraid to report their abusers, saying, “They fear going to the police because they’re often dismissed as crazy.”
Ndlovu added that after being exploited, some boys are paid amounts ranging from US$10 to US$100, depending on their age. She said:
There will be little boy children. Even the children know that when some of these businesspeople offer food or say to them come bath at my house, the next extra is when you are done eating, you would have been drugged.
The social worker said that such sexual exploitation significantly increases the risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among street-based boys.
Bulawayo provincial police spokesperson, Inspector Nomalanga Msebele, told CITE in an interview that she was not aware of any reports of sexual abuse involving street boys. She said:
When it comes to boys being sexually abused, I have never received any reports in the eight years I’ve been in this office. I also haven’t heard of the issue of their harvested sperms.
We know of such cases when people come forward but if they don’t, we won’t know there is such a thing happening to them. They are equally humans who have to be protected.
More: CITE
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