ADDRESSING ‘SEX FOR FOOD’ AIDS HAZARD

THE year 2009 commenced with the nation both saddened and scandalised by the discovery that our daughters were engaged in sex at an Embhuleni ‘bordello’ where they found either ‘employment’ or the means to stay alive (most dangerous means), depending on the interpretations offered.
Coming at a time when economic conditions are worsening both here and regionally (which reduces opportunities for livelihoods for Swazis in other countries), evidence that shows that unemployment increases the spread of HIV must be taken seriously, and programmes put in place for prevention and mitigation.
Caught
The young female ‘prostitutes’ were caught, but were certainly not alone in their quest to stay alive by trading sexual favours for food.
The Matsapha Industrial Site has since it’s inception in the 1970s been a source of hope for employment seekers, income for those who find work, and heartbreak for the hundreds of unemployed who are daily seen trekking the factory roads in a fruitless effort to earn a living. 
With factory lay-offs happening more and more, what follows is more impoverished unemployed unwilling to re turn to their rural homesteads because they will find no jobs their either (the original motivation for leaving for Matsapha).
It has also been known by social welfare investigators and health workers that when some of the unemployed reach the end of their quest for elusive work, when they are exhausted and discouraged, doing things once unthinkable become a form of ‘coping strategy.’  Particularly if they have dependants, such as women with little children, and no money or means to feed themselves and their kids, survival is paramount.  Matsapha has employed many women for the garment factories over the past decade.  Women continue to arrive to seek work.
Trade
The Matsapha unemployed who trade sex for food are apart from formal prostitution.  Prostitutes there are in Matsapha, yes.  But the food for sex scenario is not a permanent arrangement for poor and unemployment women.  It may be a temporary, perhaps once-off matter, after which they depart Matsapha, defeated by the lack of jobs and compelled by the need to find a permanent solution to sustaining themselves and their children. But by then the damage may be done.  Like all unconventional sex, including prostitution, sex for food transactions, whereby a woman will engage in sex with a man in exchange for a meal or some money for food, is often unsafe sex. 
Unsafe, unprotected sex (done without condoms) is a dangerous, potentially fatal undertaking in the age of AIDS. Given the worsening economy, it is time for AIDS groups and women’s welfare organisations to come up with programmes to address the safety of unemployed female workers.
It is helpful when studies provide data to illuminate the situation.
One recent report concentrated on the region as a whole found that women in “food insecure southern Africa” are putting themselves in danger of contracting HIV in their desperation to feed themselves and their families.
The study was published in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal, and was led by Dr Sheri Weiser of the University of California, San Francisco.  “For people in sub-Saharan Africa, insufficient food for their daily needs and infection with the human immunodeficiency virus [HIV] are inextricably linked and major causes of illness and death,” the report said.
“Women in both countries (Swaziland and Botswana) who reported food insufficiency were nearly twice as likely to have used condoms inconsistently with a non-regular partner or to have sold sex,” the report said.
Investigated
The study investigated the association between food insufficiency and inconsistent condom use, sex exchange, and other measures of risky sex among 1 255 adults in Botswana and 796 adults in Swaziland. Drought and a resulting decline in food harvests have greatly contributed to the food for sex situation. “As a result of severe food insecurity, people develop negative coping mechanisms, or ways of survival that have harmful effects on their lives,” said a WFP official in Johannesburg.
“These negative coping mechanisms include eating fewer meals, migrating from their homes to other places where they think they can find work or survive better, and pulling kids out of school.  Often, it is found that girls and women are exchanging sex for food.”
The WFP spokesperson said the burden was particularly heavy on women because they were not only expected to feed their immediate families, but also relatives such as grandparents and orphans.
The sentiment of one such woman summed up what many feel: “Hunger will kill me tomorrow but AIDS will kill me in a few years.”
“Clearly the situation is more worrying in southern Africa, where food insecurity is so serious and the HIV prevalence is so high,” the study showed.
“Swaziland and Botswana, for instance, have some of the highest HIV rates in the world, so the chances of contracting the virus from transactional sex for food, particularly given how little control they have over using protection, are high,” the study noted.
Insecurity
Nearly one in three women and one in three men in the study reported food insecurity.  It found that in addition to unprotected sex, these women were also more likely to have had cross-generational sexual relationships and to report a lack of control in sexual relationships.
“The knowledge of HIV is good, but the need for food overrides it.” The study recommended improving food security through targeted food assistance and supporting women’s subsistence farming as ways to break the cycle of sex for food.
“Such programmes would also need to enhance women’s legal and social rights so that they have more control over food supplies as well as their sexual lives,” the study concluded.
With immediate effect, food aid should be organised for unemployed women in Matsapha, and not concentrate solely on rural areas.  Unemployed men need food also, but in terms of limited HIV contagion it is women who must receive the attention because there are no reports of men on a large scale engaging in dangerous sexual practices in exchange for food.