The role of ‘pimping’ in the mediation of transactional sex at a university campus in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The article focuses on a very specific form of transactional sex that exists at a university campus in Zimbabwe, which students refer to as ‘pimping.’ Drawing extensively on the specific experiences of a male student pimp, the article demonstrates that, in practice, transactional sex takes different forms and is  not always confined to two parties (namely, a woman and a man). In this case, ‘pimp-mediated’ transactional sex introduces a third person — the pimp — into what is traditionally understood to be a relationship between the two parties and, in the process, dramatically transforms the social obligations that define this particular social relation. A major transformation that occurs in pimp-mediated transactional  sex is that it makes the pimps, rather than the women, the central people in these  relationships. This, I argue, makes transactional sex more efficient and potentially increases the female participants’ vulnerability to HIV infection.

Keywords: gender; HIV/AIDS; men; sexual behaviour; sexuality; sex work; social anthropology; southern Africa; women

African Journal of AIDS Research 2011, 10(2): 165–171