Prostitution in African Urban Centres: A Special Study of Girl-Child Prostitution In Kisumu, Kenya and Nigeria.
Date
2001-03
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tangaza University College
Abstract
In an attempt to portray the plight of African youth in the twenty-first century,
Sam Mwale, a Kenyan social analyst says, "Many of them (youth) are brought up in
destitution and deprivation in urban and rural squalor. crime, commercial sex and
rebellion against everything." Most African youth are growing up in very unpleasant
circumstances. It is no wonder then that pheonomena such as prostitution, rape,
domestic violence, child labour and drug abuse among others may sound so normal to
a lay ear.
Prostitution, as in the granting of sexual favours in exchange for economic
gain, is as old as mankind. However, as man has developed technologically, so has
morality been degraded. Child prostitution has arisen over the centuries and is today
one of the greatest anathema of modernity. In Kenya today, there is great evidence of
child prostitution. A possible explanation might be that children are more naive than
adults and may not have been previously exposed to STD infections, not to mention
AIDS. As will be seen later in this paper, child prostitution is closely linked to
domestic violence, rape and other forms of sexual harrassment, sodomy, early
marriages and pornography among others.
Kisumu town is an important centre in Western Kenya. The provincial
headquarters of Nyanza Province, it provides a central attraction to Kenyans and
foreigners due to its proximity to Lake Victoria, the second largest freshwater lake in
the world. Kisumu is also the homeground of renowned political heavyweights like the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, former Vice-President and later official leader of the
opposition in the Kenyan parliament. The Luo people who inhabit the greater part of
Nyanza province are renowned intellectuals, sportsmen and politicians. To say the
least, most parastatal and private companies in Kenya and East Africa are led or
managed by people from Nyanza.
However, Kisumu is constantly becoming the centre of attraction for nongovernmental
and church agencies concerned with AIDs or AIDs-related problems. In
a 1989 report on children's rights done by the United Nations, Kisumu was found to
have a 39% rate of child prostitutes, with the children ranging from 9-18 years.2 This
number may have doubled by now, ten years later. In my fact-finding report, the
Pandipieri Counselling Programme for practising prostitutes and ex-prostitutes deals
with child prostitutes as a majority of the reported cases. The St Mary Magdalene girlchild
prostitute group deals with girls aged between 10-16 years from Kisumu town.
Most confessed having sex with as many as six men a day and earning less than 1,000
Kenyan shillings for it.
Child prostitution is a demeaning and demoralising practice. A woman is made
to carry and protect life. Her very biology is an inevitable "obedience" to life, an
opening to it and for it. A Congolese theologian, Sr Petronilla Kayiba, says: "In Africa,
even a young girl may often be called `maman' or 'manly', an endearing pet name
expressing recognition of her maternity or her capacity to welcome and protect life"?
In African traditional society, a woman is greatly valued for her maternity. It
was actually a curse for any woman who failed to bear children, John S. Mbiti, an authority on African traditional religions, says that not having children was simply not
excusable in traditional African society.4
Child prositution is simply inconceivable in an African traditional set-up.
Changing times and morals have brought about a whole new way of thinking and
hence new modes of behaviour. The media, education, Christianity, new role models,
neglect of cultural values and practices, ignorance and a myriad of other reasons all
contribute to the viewing of a woman, not as a symbol of life and respect, but as a
source of sexual gratification.
Description
Keywords
Prostitution, African Urban Centres, Kisumu