Clad in a black and white skirt with its hemline well above the knees, the year-old Kudzai, whose first name is being used to conceal her identity, is whispering a prayer to God for her night to pay off in this gold-rich area located in Manicaland Province near the porous border with neighbouring Mozambique.
She usually returns home early in the morning the following day after spending the whole night working. My sister, who has been paying for my school fees all these years, could not afford it anymore. There are over 1, mining pits in the Redwing Mine concession in Penhalonga, owned by a South African mining firm Metallon Corporation.
His dealings are exposed in a page report by the Centre for Natural Resource Governance, a local civil society organisation that defends the rights of communities affected by extractive industries in Zimbabwe.
Amid an economic struggle, many girls in Penhalonga and surrounding areas have turned to the sex trade to eke a living. The artisanal and illegal miners often take advantage of these minors to sexually abuse and exploit them. In , sex workers got relief after a landmark ruling by the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe that a woman could not be arrested for soliciting sex by merely being in a bar or nightclub.
The legal age of consent is currently 16, but this year the Constitutional Court ruled that it should be raised to 18 years. But underage girls like Kudzai, with no options for other work, have ventured into the trade and mining areas are hotspots. But before this, Zimbabwe was in an economic crisis due to massive corruption and economic mismanagement blamed on the Mnangagwa-led government. With 59,6 percent of women in the country unemployed, many are turning to sex work to earn a living, according to a recent survey by the State-controlled Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency ZimStat.
