Zambia should save its own children...
By JAPHET BANDA
WHEN Tomaida Tembo received news of her impending trip to Lusaka, she was 500 km away in Katete’s Kathumba village in the Eastern Province.
The 11-year-old did not know how to react.
Lusaka to her, has been a mythical place and according to those that had been to the city, it was a place of “agebenga” (bandits) and the “akapenta” (prostitutes) who patrolled and patronised the streets of the city of ‘lights’.
What had been a mythical place to Tomaida was soon to become reality.
The news of Tomaida’s impending journey was conveyed to her mother by her distant relative who lived three villages away.
The messenger simply said her daughter who lived in Lusaka had asked him to find a young girl who could accompany her younger children to school.
And being a relation, the messenger could not think of anyone other than Tomaida who was doing well at her local school.
He told her mother that Tomaida would have a better opportunity attending school in Lusaka.
She did not need to think twice.
Having been to Lusaka once herself, she could envision her daughter living in one of those mansions she saw along Great East road and a better life that would follow for both of them after Tomaida had completed school in her distant cousin’s home.
Tomaida was to live for Lusaka immediately.
To make her travelling easy, the distant cousin had sent enough money to cover her travelling expenses and a lot more to help her mother settle down after her departure.
That was five years ago since the morning Tomaida left the sanctuary of her mother on a journey that changed her life forever.
Wondering on the cold streets of Lusaka, Tomaida awaits her next client on Addis Ababa drive.
She has already serviced two clients and the evening is still young and so she stands under a “misplaced” masuku tree waylaying her next catch.
The odour emanating from the masuku tree reminded her of Kathumba village and her mother.
As a child Tomaida believed that masuku trees only grew in her village and finding one on Addis Ababa drive in Lusaka thrilled her beyond description.
However, Knowing that she will never see her mother again made her sad and a flood of tears came down her cold bitten face.
She was in this condition under the masuku tree when this author found her one cold June night of 2002.
It was during one of the evenings that the research team on “Children in Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking for Commercial Sexual Exploitation, Labour and Crime in Zambia” conducted by MAPODE -- a non-governmental organisation that specialises in child protection issues was out on the streets tracking down child prostitutes.
With journalistic instincts fully engaged, sniffing a “block buster” story was inevitable and yet what came out from Tomaida was more than this author could hope for.
Prostitution as a means of income generation is not a new phenomenon in Zambia.
Introducing its ugly head in 1979 when women of about 20 to 30 years old were first seen parading themselves along Addis Ababa road in Lusaka, the trend has spread like wild bush fire sweeping across the country and engulfing the female folk from as young as 11-years -old girls seen parading themselves on street corners, in night clubs, bars, taverns and hotels to grand mothers of well over 40 years old plying their legendary trade in compound beer halls.
The involvement of young girls in the trade that has come to be known as commercial sex industry is of grave concern.
In December 1999, Zambia recorded its first court case of trafficking in young girls for commercial sex exploitation when an Australian male was arrested at Chirundu border post while allegedly trying to export five Zambian teenage girls to Australia for prostitution.
Although the man was acquitted on grounds of inadequate laws to deal with such cases, it nevertheless confirmed the existence of rampant child trafficking for labour and sex exploitation in the country.
According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), child trafficking is the movement of children from place to place within and across national borders, through force, coercion or deception into situations involving their economic and sexual exploitation.
Child trafficking is a crime under international law and it is widely recognised as a distinct and flagrant violation of children’s rights, comprising one of the worst forms of child labour.
The case of Tomaida Tembo is a glaring example of child trafficking within a nation’s borders.
Coerced and deceived by offers of better education and a safer place to live in the city, she left the safety of her village only to become a maid with no wages in her distant cousin’s home.
Apart from working without pay, she was constantly abused sexually by her cousin’s husband whenever her relative was away from home.
When the family migrated to another country in search of better wages for their labour, Tomaida was left in the cold with no place or known relative to go to.
“I got you out of the village and introduced you to city life at my expense; you are a big girl now and you can look after yourself,” she recalls her cousin saying before she got into a car that took the family to the airport and left her standing on the veranda of an empty house.
Tomaida sought refuge at the old maid’s house who lived in the compound and worked for the family that lived next to her cousin’s house.
It was at this house that Tomaida met other young girls that lived with the old maid and peddled sex to men that visited the house every evening.
This was her introduction to brothel prostitution.
But why are children trafficked?
“The trafficking of children is a result of unmet demand for cheap and malleable labour in general, and of the demand for young girls and boys in the fast-growing commercial sex sector as well as in other economic sectors.
Though children are generally less productive than adults, they are easier to abuse, less assertive and less able to claim their rights accordingly, they can be made to work longer hours with little food, poor accommodation and no benefits”, records ILO-London on it’s website.
Many supply factors encourage the trafficking of children. Among the most prevalent are: Poverty and the desire to earn a living or help support the family; lack of education and access to schools; conflict and natural disasters that devastate local economies; cultural attitudes towards children and girls in particular; local laws and regulations.
The above description is a replica of the prevailing situation in Zambia.
Mention should be made of a case in the subordinate court in Lusaka involving two 14 -year- old girls that are alleged to have been lured to Ireland by two Congolese nationals promising them educational opportunities.
The first testimony came from Christine Ntumba, 34, who testified in the Lusaka magistrate court how her 13-year-old juvenile cousin was allegedly lured to Ireland and later defiled on two occasions.
Bangu Kasenge and Delphine Bakuna Chibwabwa are charged with abduction and defilement of two juveniles.
The duo are alleged to have abducted the 13 and 14 year old juveniles to Ireland and sexually abused them between November 20 and 30, last year.
According to the witness, the first accused Bangu Kasenge is alleged to have raped the juveniles before they bolted and sought refugee with the Irish police.
While the numbers are difficult to document, the 2002 ILO Global Report on Child Labour estimates that about 1.2 million children are involved.
A good number of these would be Zambians. If left unchecked, the ILO believes that the numbers of children trafficked will rise.
Most trafficked children come from extremely poor families and/or marginalised ethnic groups within their respective societies. In other cases, trafficked children, from financially disadvantaged families, are lured into seeking “jobs” outside their home communities or countries.
Both boys and girls alike are subject to trafficking.
While trafficking children within borders is tolerated in Zambia, law cannot stop taking them across borders.
The closest the law can go is when children have been abducted.
There is no law against trafficking of human beings in Zambia.
The traffickers know this and they won’t make a mistake of abducting their prey; they coerce, they entice, they lure and make convincing promises of a better life for their target prey.
By the time the victim decides to come along, it would be with their consent as well as that of their parents or guardians.
The unearthing of Islamic schools in Lusaka that recruited boys between four years to 18 years from Northern and Luapula provinces, hundreds of miles away from their homesteads and locked them behind bars, changed their names and forced Arabic as the only means of communication makes an interesting case study.
The common practice for traffickers is to sever communication between the victim and his/her family, change the victim’s identity and isolate the prey from normal human activity leaving them solely dependant on the trafficker for survival.
Information on human trafficking in Zambia has been lacking both at national and household level.
The MAPODE research on ‘Children in Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking for Commercial Sexual Exploitation, Labour and Crime in Zambia’ couldn’t have come at a better time.
The need to substantiate the existence, extent, and impact of the problem of trafficking in children for commercial sexual exploitation within and outside Zambia is of paramount importance now than ever before.
The research has systematically compiled, documented, and collated a formal report on trafficking of children to and from Zambia through participatory action research.
The dissemination of the findings of this research is scheduled for July 15 at Pamodzi Hotel in Lusaka.
The research also sought to identify the traffickers.
The findings confirm the information posted on the ILO website which states that many different people are involved in trafficking from the child’s place of origin, through transit areas and at the final destinations.
Any intervention to halt trafficking must not only target the child victims but also their families, communities, recruiters, intermediaries, document providers, transporters, corrupt officials, employers and clients.
The interviews carried out during the research clearly showed that traffickers include prostitutes themselves, cross boarder traders and trackers.
Others include businessmen and religious organisations.
The trafficking of children is not new.
It has existed for many years and continues to grow across all continents and cultures.
Nearly all countries are affected in some way, either as sending, receiving or transit countries for trafficked children.
Thousand of adults are involved in the trafficking of children.
The nationalities that were found on the streets and border posts included Malawians, Tanzanians, Zimbabweans, Burundese, Rwandans, Nigerians, Somalians and Zambians while the Congolese were in majority.
The trafficking of human beings is unacceptable under any circumstances, but the trafficking of vulnerable children and young people is an intolerable violation of their rights to protection from exploitation, to play, to education, to health and to family life.
The caging of boys in the two Islamic schools in Lusaka and Chongwe that were raided by police presents a clear case of violations of children’s rights.
Youth, Sports and Child Development Minister Gladys Nyirongo has since implored the police to investigate fully the true and hidden agenda of the institutions.
And Inter-African Network for Human Rights and Development (Afronet) executive director Ngande Mwanajiti said that “the action of keeping young boys between four and 10 at the school was a direct affront to children’s rights as enshrined in the international convention on the rights of the child which Zambia is part to”.
Meanwhile, the ILO views trafficking as an assault on human dignity and a denial of a person’s opportunity to make the most of his or her resources and to contribute to the economic development of his or her nation.
The exploitation suffered by victims of trafficking is contrary to full, productive and freely chosen employment even more so for trafficked children, who often suffer the loss of their potential to become productive adults.
Cases of child trafficking have been reported in South Asia, South-East Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, with patterns of trafficking in the Americas and Caribbean only now beginning to emerge.
However, South Asia, South-East Asia, Central and West Africa are the areas where the number of children trafficked is particularly alarming.
Within a country, children are trafficked from rural to urban areas for exploitation in labour and in commercial sex.
Cross-border trafficking is becoming widespread in all regions, as economic differentials between neighbouring countries widen.
Most children continue to be trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation.
However, a number of recent studies in Asia and Central and West Africa indicate that children are often trafficked into other forms of labour exploitation, including domestic service, armed conflict, service industries restaurants/bars) and hazardous work in factories, agriculture, construction, fishing and begging.
In Zambia, information is finally emerging from the MAPODE research and other reported cases of trafficking as to how deep the nation has plunged in human trade.
On the international scene, for the better part of a century, the ILO has stood resolutely against the dangerous proposition that human labour should be valued merely as a commodity.
The organisation acts forcefully against forced labour of adults and children alike.
The ILO has for a long time addressed child trafficking through Its Forced Labour Convention (Number 29) that aims to eradicate “all work or service, which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.”
Since 1999, the fight against child trafficking has been reinforced by the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (Number 182).
This powerful instrument confirms child trafficking as a practice similar to slavery and calls for countries to take immediate action to secure the prohibition and elimination of all worst forms of child labour.
The ILO International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) works toward the effective elimination of trafficking of children by addressing its root causes.
In collaboration with other international organisations, IPEC conducts action research on child trafficking; supports the efforts of governments, workers and employers organisations and civil society in the prevention of trafficking; in the rescue, repatriation and restoration of the rights of victims; and in
strengthening the judiciary and the police in prosecuting offenders.
In Zambia the ILO/IPEC has embarked on a massive education campaign that will educate and inform the citizens, civil society, families, and Government on the evils of human trafficking and other forms of child labour.
The inadequacy in law should be of paramount concern to legislators.
While the Zambia police have responded to the challenge by establishing a desk that investigates cases of human trafficking, the inability to prosecute offenders because of the inadequacy in law leaves much to be desired.
Police spokesperson Brenda Muntemba confirmed with this author the establishment of a desk at force headquarters that will specifically deal with human trafficking cases, she however bemoaned the lack of legislation to deal with the same.
Civil society should mount concerted awareness creation and information dissemination campaigns on child trafficking particularly in rural areas where families are more vulnerable to deceit from the traffickers.
It is almost too late to save Tomaida, in fact the last efforts by this author to locate her proved futile.
She is believed to have shifted camp to Livingstone, a tourist capital and more lucrative place for prostitutes who target tourists.
The MAPODE research has revealed that there are hundreds of Tomaidas strewn all over Zambia and abroad forced into sex slavery for the benefit of the traffickers.
The writing is on the wall; the battle cry has been sounded; shouldn’t Zambia save its own children?
