JOHN GROBLER, Windhoek | Monday
NAMIBIAS growing number of prostitutes must be registered as “a matter of national urgency” to prevent their clients spreading HIV to their families, Health Minister Libertine Amathila says.
“Men often refuse to use condoms,” Amathila told AFP in an interview.
“It seems they feel if they pay, they have the right to not use condoms.
“We are absolutely in the grips of an Aids pandemic, and there can be no denial that we have a growing number of prostitutes.”
Prostitution is technically illegal in Namibia, but tolerated.
Amathila said it was especially wealthier men who tended to frequent prostitutes, judging by the large number of expensive German cars that regularly cruise Windhoek’s downtown red light district. She added that she suspected many of these men had families.
Namibia, like many other sub-Saharan countries, has a large migrant labour force of men who leave their families behind in rural areas and flock to urban centres to look for work.
But with unemployment at about 40% and thousands of school leavers hitting the streets every year with little or no prospect of finding paid work, women especially have resorted to prostitution as their only means of survival, Amathila said.
“A recent study of Walvis Bay (Namibia’s main harbour town on the Atlantic Coast) showed that most women are resorting to this trade out of poverty. Most of them are single mothers who are just trying to feed their children,” she said.
According to the Aids Care Trust, which is co-financed by the state, Namibia has a national HIV infection rate of about 23% among adults. In urban areas like Windhoek and Walvis Bay, where most economic activity is concentrated, the adult infection rate is as high as 34%, the trust says.
Figures released recently by the health ministry said Namibia could have as many as 118_000 Aids orphans in five years’ time, if a current population growth of 3.5% in a population of 1.7 million remained constant.
As elsewhere in Africa, which has more than 25 million HIV sufferers – 70% of the world total – the pandemic is hitting Namibia’s 25 to 45 age group the hardest.
They include most skilled workers, and the Aids Care Trust estimates that it could cost as much as 16% of the country’s $2.5bn gross national product to deal with the problem.
Roger Williams, the manager of a coastal construction company, said the infection rate among its skilled workers was estimated to be as high as 70%.
“These are your crane operators, your heavy machine operators, all guys who make more money than the ordinary “handlanger” [unskilled construction worker],” he said.
“They are the ones who can afford to visit the prostitutes regularly.”
But it may be hard to convince prostitutes that they should register, as no one wants the stigma of being a professional sex worker attached to their name, said Apere Davids, the director of the Aids Care Trust.
Prostitution takes on many forms, with otherwise gainfully employed women consenting to providing sexual favours for bosses as a way of advancing their careers, Davids added.
“This is a very small society, and many prostitutes feel that if their names go on a list somewhere, there is a chance that their families back home (in rural Namibia) would find out what they are really doing,” he warned.
“But this is the only way to stop them from being exploited by both their ‘handlers’ and their clients, and stop the disease,” he said.
A recent trip around Windhoek’s red light district showed clusters of prostitutes on virtually every street corner who openly hailed passing luxury cars, but ignored sub-compacts.
“We don’t do those, they have no manners,” one prostitute who called herself “Doreen” told AFP.
Like her friends, she was hostile to the idea of being registered by the ministry of health and social services.
Amathila agreed that social prejudices would have to be overcome if registration was going to work.
“Men will keep on doing this, but it is their families we have to try and protect,” she said. – AFP