Under-age dancers exposed to abuse

By Prince Mushawevato

The beauty and joy of dance is fast becoming sullied by dance groups that incorporate minors in their ensembles. Both female and male dance groups remain major drawcards in bars and nightclubs, but so disturbing is the age of some of the dance group mem­bers, who are clearly under-age.

To make matters worse, these outfits have modified their dances to include lewd and highly sexually suggestive acts using young girls and boys barely in their teens.

Apparently as a cost-cutting measure these outfits have resorted to employing desperate school dropouts and children from poor backgrounds. And it seems that these groups are fast becoming pop­ular not for their dance, but as rich hunt­ing grounds for perverts and pae­dophiles.

Performing throughout the night for measly wages, the young girls and, in some instances, boys have become easy prey.

After allegedly abusing alcohol and all sorts of substances to keep going throughout the night, the boys and girls are targeted by revellers. Without money to hire taxis home, the juve­nile dancers are victims of “good Samaritans” that turn out to be the proverbial wolves in sheep skin.

The Dancers’ Association of Zim­babwe (DAZ), a body which governs operations of these dance groups, has since its inception been trying to come up with ways to stamp out this disturb­ing rot. The DAZ, which has about 50 mem­bers on its books, is man­dated by the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe (NACZ) to man­age the affairs of dancers.

One of the founder members of DAZ, who is also an administrator within the same organisation, Harpers Mapimhidze, confirmed that the use of under-aged dancers had increased.

“Children are being abused, not just as under-age dancers but also sexually. They are engaging in illicit activities such as drinking and smoking, which, apart from them being under-age, is also fur­ther compromising their behaviour,” said Mapimhidze.

Mapimhidze added that although their organisation has over the years tried to organise workshops to conscien­tise the dancers, control was becoming difficult with each passing day — because, he said, was due to the fact that new dancers were joining the trade on a daily basis.

“Young boys and girls are being lured from outside Harare, especially from Bulawayo, under the pretext that there is employment in Harare, yet that is not the case. When they drop out of school and join the industry, especially in Harare, that is when reality usually dawns on them, which is how they end up engag­ing in prostitution to supplement the lit­tle they get from dancing,” he noted.

Added Mapimhidze: “As the DAZ, we have a code of conduct that clearly states the minimum age requirements for all our dancers, but some groups continue to breach these. We are investigating these cases, but it is not easy because there are too many dance groups in Harare alone, half of which are not regis­tered with us.”

The DAZ administrator said as a result many of these under-age girls and boys continued to be arrested by the police in and outside the nightclubs, which is also a concern for the associa­tion.

“The problem is we cannot let them stay incarcerated, so we negotiate with the police to try and help these young­sters return to their normal lives, but they always come back to the clubs. Most of those who get arrested do not have identity cards,” he said.

In an interview, national police spokesperson Senior Assistant Commis­sioner Wayne Bvudzijena pointed out to this publication that the law enforcers will continue investigating any wrong­doing with the aim of bringing offenders to book.

“Children under the age of 16 should not be commercially employed and should not go into bars since it is an offence for both the children and the bar owners. As the police, we will investi­gate, arrest and hand over culprits to the courts for punishment,” said the police spokesperson.

Partson “Chipaz” Chimbodza, a local show promoter and club owner, indi­cated that some groups had a tendency of misrepresenting facts on the ages of their members.

“Some groups in a bid to win con­tracts for a show lie about the ages of some of their members. However, per­sonally when I discover on the day of the show that a group gave wrong facts and in actual fact has minors in their struc­ture, that will be the last that I contract them for any show,” he said.

Said another promoter and bar owner, Biggie Chinoperekwei: “The issue of minors joining or forming dance groups is worrisome. We have since tasked some guys in our management team to closely monitor members of these groups so that if there is any anomaly, we quickly address it.”

Mapimhidze of DAZ also further added that in most instances girls were the most abused. This, he said, was due to their mixing and mingling with rev­ellers in bars and clubs.

“Dancers should be professional. They should not move around in show venues soliciting for drinks or any favours that will later compromise them. And also, club and bar owners should respect dancers and remunerate them accord­ingly. The DAZ has minimum set charges for different shows, and those need to be respected,” said Mapimhidze.