‘Phwezi Girls’: a tale of a 20-roomed brothel in Mzuzu

It is evening. The compound is busy again. Scores of women, most of them young and beautiful, are busy grooming themselves. Some are cooking outside their rooms. The compound is a cacophony of voices, most of them spewing vulgar words. Then night falls. The compound is deserted. The women, in their beautiful attires, trek towards pubs in the area. That was six months ago. Today, June 5 2013, as I walk through the compound, it is different.

I see a few of the women around. Most of the rooms are now filled with families, bachelors and Mzuzu University students. The rise of ‘Phwezi Girls’ This is the story of ‘Phwezi Girls’, a 20-roomed brothel at Luwinga Industrial Area in Mzuzu. To get to the root of the story, I had to live in the area for close to nine months to become part of the community. In December 2012, the compound was occupied by about 20 sex workers. Some of them were my friends. We usually met in the surrounding pubs where I would buy them one or two bottles of the head-spinning stuff. Because of our closeness, they felt comfortable enough to share the secrets of their trade. “Some clients come from as far as Karonga and camp here for a week,” said Thandie Nyirenda [not her real name], one of the sex workers at “Phwezi”. These are not ordinary people. They are well-to-do family men, mostly business tycoons. This happens mostly during the tobacco marketing season, according to Nyirenda. The reason is simple. Luwinga is a busy industrial area where the tobacco auction floors are located. Every night, the area is parked with trucks loaded with merchandise, especially tobacco bales. “Most of us have personal clients who spend their nights in our rooms. Outside the tobacco season, we usually go to Chikangawa [Viphya Plantations], Nkhata Bay or Karonga. This time we target fishermen or businessmen,” said Nyirenda. But how did the compound come to be called Phwezi Girls? Lucy Kayira, who said she has lived in the area since 1998, has the records. “This was like any ordinary place. In fact, the house was first occupied by a pastor. But after he moved out, prostitutes started occupying the rooms. “The first two sex workers were students from Phwezi Girls Secondary School in Rumphi. They bolted from school and camped in the area to engage in prostitution. It was a big scandal. “That was the origin of the name Phwezi Girls. Then more and more girls started renting the rooms,” said Kayira. Today, only four sex workers occupy the compound. So what happened? “Most new comers lodge at the compound before they find a full-fledged house,” explained Kayira. Monthly charges for rooms in the compound range from K3 500 to K6 500.

Owner of ‘Phwezi Girls,’ whose name we have withheld, was suspicious of me when I posed as a businessperson looking for a room at the compound. I wanted to know why most sex workers had left the area. “I do not have a vacant room at the moment. If you come on July 1, you should find a place,” she said. She led me to a house occupied by a student of Mzuzu University. The student, she said, would be moving out end of June. It is a small one-bedroomed house. There are 11 such small houses surrounding the main house which has five bedrooms. Four other rooms lie outside the brick-fenced compound. The owner was quick to deny the existence of sex workers in the compound. “There are no sex workers here. I chased them. We only have one who is here temporarily,” she said while giving me a frown to show that she was not comfortable to talk about ‘Phwezi Girls.’ But according to Nyirenda, who still lives in the compound, four sex workers are still lodging there. She said some sex workers who lived in the compound graduated from the trade through marriages while others moved out in search of greener pastures.

‘Brothels have degraded our area’ ‘Phwezi Girls’ is not the only place in Luwinga where commercial sex services are on offer. About one in every three houses in the township is occupied by a sex worker, according to our rough findings. Some sex workers live in rooms behind pubs in the area. There are about 10 drinking joints in Luwinga. At least three of them house prostitutes. “The rooms are pegged in the range of K800 to K1 500 per day depending on their quality,” said Nyirenda. She said the sex workers usually insist on using condoms but she was quick to add that some clients demand ‘plain’ sex which goes at a higher rate. “Our rates start from K1 000. But we usually peg the amount at K2 000 and after negotiations, we settle for K1 000. For plain sex, some sex workers risk their lives at an average rate of K10 000,” said Nyirenda. She said sex is available at any time at the “girls boarding school.” The emergence of ‘sex homes’ in the area has come with some consequences. “Luwinga was free of sex workers during the early 2000s. We could count the number of prostitutes in the area. These had jobs, but they would engage in prostitution at night. “Our children are copying what these people do. Families are breaking up. Generally, morality is bad here,” said Kayira. The law prohibits brothels—Lawyer According to a Mzuzu-based lawyer Christon Ghambi, the law prohibits brothels. “A brothel is a house or a room or state of rooms or any place which is used for the purpose of prostitution,” he said, quoting the Penal Code. “Any person who keeps a house, room, state of rooms, place of any kind for the purpose of prostitution shall be guilty of an offence and imprisonment for 7 years,” warned Ghambi. He said an amendment of the Penal Code in 2011 broadened the offence to include any person who owns, manages, supervises or is under control of a house used for prostitution. “But the rooms or the house has to be used for prostitution, whereby prostitution is defined as any sexual activity with another person for the purpose of money or anything of economic value,” said Ghambi.

Mzuzu Police spokesperson Maurice Chapola said police cannot act unless the city council certifies such places as brothels. Mzuzu City Council chief executive officer, Thomas Chirwa, said he is new in the city, so he has not verified that ‘Pwezi Girls’ is a brothel. But the owner told Nation on Sundaywhen we confronted her officially that she closed the place in March 2013 because it was tainting her image. “It was not our wish to keep sex workers. These people could come with their husbands, but after some time they [the husbands] would disappear,” she said. Principal of Phwezi Foundation Panji Nkhwazi said he is aware of the existence of a parallel ‘Phwezi Girls’ in Mzuzu.

“In fact, it damages our reputation because Phwezi [Girls] is an educational institution and not a place for sex workers. “We have been there in Mzuzu at some point to ask the landlord to change the name. But he said there is nothing he could do because the name is not inscribed anywhere, but it’s the people who christened the place ‘Phwezi Girls’,” said Nkhwazi.