Screw You! This Flag Is Theirs Too: Reconstructing Narratives And Challenging Perceptions with Zimbabwean Sex Workers.

Abstract

This is a story about Zimbabwean sex workers’ stories. What their experiences are, and how they make sense of them within the heteronormative hegemony that is Zimbabwe. A space in which to be a sex worker is to be an undisciplined body, an abominable and evil practice that defiles the nations’ socio-cultural and moral fabric. This is the single story that dominates public discourse and other experiences of being a sex worker remain untold. If and when they are told, HIV is the focus. In particular, how sex workers are a(t) risk of contracting and transmitting HIV. I hanker, therefore in this study to centre the voice of sex workers themselves in exploring the multiple experiences of being a sex worker through a popular participatory theatre approach. The investigation hinges on Decoloniality and Postcolonial feminist theories. Through a marriage of academic research, activism and art, the study makes humble but significant contributions, mainly to the subject and form of inquiry. That is sex work research and Applied theatre, respectively. To an extent it is also an important addition to African feminist theorization. Sex work has been named, understood and mostly theorised from a western perspective. I challenge the notion of the universal sex worker or stereotypical ‘African prostitute’ by investigating the experiences of a varied sample of Zimbabwean sex workers. Although sex work scholarship is growing on the continent, there is still a relative scarcity of localized sex worker stories especially in Zimbabwe, apart from biomedical oriented research. Moreover, it brings to fore the voices of transgender women sex workers who often fall through the cracks of the already limited sex work research. As an Applied theatre practitioner, I also contribute to practice and knowledge in the discipline through this study. Sex work is an issue that most practitioners evade in an otherwise vibrant Applied theatre movement in Zimbabwe. The study dares the morally anxious Zimbabwean context to explore the political potency of AT, specifically Popular Participatory Theatre in exploring sex work, an issue that most practitioners evade and avoid in Zimbabwe. Particularly how the pedagogy can be used to facilitate space for telling alternative narratives as well as transforming sex workers living conditions and challenging their denial from laying claim to a Zimbabwean identity. iii | P a g e Further, I add an Afro-feminist voice to an issue that Africa largely denies as western. One that is also avoided by most African feminists mostly because of fear. This fear is a familiar experience of mine as a young feminist interested in seeing gender, sex and sexuality issues through an African lens. But of what need is a liberatory pedagogy that is predicated on the culture of silence and fear? Extricating myself from the abyss of fear to theorise about sex work as a Christian, Zimbabwean is in part a contribution to the larger feminist objective. Especially as I challenge the decorporealisation of cis and trans women sex worker’s bodies in conservative Zimbabwe. Major insights from the study are to the effect that sex work in Zimbabwe is queer. It is much more complex and nuanced, than is projected. The study contradicts numerous prevailing assumptions, myths, and stereotypes about sex work(ers) in Zimbabwe. Even the individuals that sell sex in Zimbabwe are not just poor, uneducated, uncultured women, nor are all clients/customers men. Empirically, the demography cuts across social status, gender, sexual orientation among other variants. Here, we are also redirected to alternative, humane portrayals of sex workers. Moreover, what their lived experiences are from their own perspective.