Agency: what is it? Simply put it describes the condition of acting, exerting power, being in action. What helps us know the extent to which people do things because they intend to? How do we know whether they are passive victims? A lot of our ideas come through other people’s descriptions. So the principal narrative about prostitutes says they aren’t in a position to elect sex work over other jobs because they are too disadvantaged by poverty, don’t understand how bad selling sex is or do it because they have been damaged by abuse or are coerced or hijacked into it. As I’ve pointed out in a story about sex-hungry babes in Angola, news sources in Africa sometimes use the opposite sort of language. Here, women who sell sex are described as definitely being in action, targeting their rich tobacco-farmer victims. My point in publishing such against-the-current commentaries is to illustrate that what the West says isn’t the only way to talk, and since I don’t believe that Europe is always ‘ahead’ of Rest of World, I don’t say that this characterisation is by definition  wrong or unprogressive. There are some tough, man-eating hussies out there . . .

Sex workers target tobacco farmers

Fungi Kwaramba, The Zimbabwean, 31 May 2010

Harare: Commercial sex workers are making a killing by targeting tobacco farmers at the Boka Tobacco Auction floors, with some travelling from as far as South Africa, says the Population Service International (PSI). Speaking at a media briefing in Harare last week, PSI Interpersonal Communications Manager, Patience Kunaka, said that prices of sex per act have gone up to US$25 a session from US$5 due to the recent targeting of rich tobacco farmers. . .