The Sunday News
BULAWAYO’S hosting of the African Union Sports Council (AUSC) Region 5 Under-20 Youth Games that coincided with the traditional festive spending brought with it a lot of activities in the city’s day and night life.
The Games have provided a lot of entertainment to the people of Bulawayo and business opportunities to others.
Everywhere people are talking of the Games. Suddenly people are fascinated by the usually not so popular games like netball, boxing and swimming.
The Games have brought a new lease of life to the city that had gone to slumber due to the massive de-industrialisation. Vendors suddenly had something to smile about, selling their wares at the various sporting venues, commuter omnibus operators also diverted from their usual routes to take residents to various stadiums and for once Bulawayo’s cosmopolitan populace was unified by a common goal of cheering their local favourite teams.
With most of the games ending at around 10pm when teams are supposed to take a well deserved rest at their various sleeping venues and get ready for a continuation of the games the next morning, it emerged that some of the visitors have been oiling the wheels of the oldest profession.
For ladies of the night this is when the “real” games are set into motion where participants fall prey to the lewd tongues as they also seek to benefit from the mega sporting event.
A Sunday Leisure crew last Wednesday went around some of the night spots in the city and it was a hive of activity, which is a surprise for a city whose night life has become a real nightmare.
In all the night spots, foreign delegates, mainly coaches, managers and other technical staffers, donned in their bright coloured uniforms bearing tags around their necks, as if to show everyone who they were and where they were from could be seen downing their favourite beers with some in the company of ladies of the night.
For prostitutes in the city this week brought a new lease of life.
“Business is high, these people have money, you can charge literally anything. Most of them are here for the first time so we not only give them a ‘nice’ time but we are also more of tour guides taking them to all the places in the city where things happen.
“The nice part is that they are very generous. They are not stingy, after drinking off their pockets the whole night they also pay for our preferred lodges and the ‘service fee,’ said one lady of the night who identified herself as Yvonne.
Yvonne’s story is basically the story of most flesh peddlers in the city, who wish that the games could go on judging from the brisk business they have brought them.
Questioned on how much they were charging foreign delegates, the ladies of the night interviewed said although they had no fixed charge it ranged from $30 to $50 compared to the normal charge of between $10 and $20.
“We have been with these Mozambicans for the past four days, every day they call us around 9pm to come and collect them from wherever they would be and we go on to choose a place we can go and hang out. Since we are not allowed at their villages, we also have the responsibility of choosing the lodges where we can go and sleep after partying the night away,” said another lady of the night who identified herself as Busi.
However, this temporary lease of life among the ladies has brought frustration to another section of society; these being Zimbabwean patrons who had become the “usual” customers of the ladies of the night.
At one night club along Fife Street an argument on “who gets the ladies” almost degenerated into a fist fight when two Zimbabweans started pushing around a group of Mozambicans who they accused of “stealing” their women.
“These people think they can do what they want, these ladies are ours, we drink with them daily and know them inside out, now these foreigners just come and do as they wish in our place, this we can never allow,” said one of the Zimbabweans.
However, when the bouncers asked the ladies to choose they naturally went for the Mozambicans noting that they had the money.
