ADVANCE  AFRICA

ZAMBIANS LADIES TAKE THE LEAD

African ladies are advancing rapidly in the high-profile activities such as television presentation and beauty pageants …. and Zambians are in the vanguard of that advance.
For several years Rosemary Chileshe has been Britain’s leading African beauty contestant and model, and her compatriots are succeeding now in all aspects of the industry from promotion to participation. Yet beauty is not restricted to pageantry and also comes into the homes of the nation through the television screen.
Lukwesa Burak, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at a reception for UK ZAMBIANS at the High Commission in London, can be described in the nicest possible way as being a “lady of the night”.

She presents Sky Late News from midnight to 4 a.m. and then fronts World News, which caters for audiences within Africa, Asia and Europe, until 6 a.m. Mrs Burak, whose working “day” starts when she leaves her home in Leicestershire for London at 7 p.m, has an affinity with the hours of darkness.
She said: “I’ve always worked the early shift. At Nottingham (earlier in her career as a “weather girl”) it was non-stop, we had 21 radio broadcasts in the morning. I had to be up at 4.30 a.m. to start at 6 p.m. First I had to ring the Weather Centre, where the forecasters would give you the science and you had to work out the best way to put the story across to the public” Lukwesa can still remember being “a little girl, freshly bathed, pony-tailed, and dressed in her new dress sitting in a puddle making mud cakes” back in Zambia, where she was born and which she left aged 8 years when her mother remarried.
She arrived in Britain during one of the worst winters on record. Lukwesa graduated from Sussex University with a degree in Geography and European Studies, and was awarded a European Union Scholarship to complete a Master of Science degree from Leicester University. Her studies included a year at Neuchatel in Switzerland through which she became fluent in French.
Ms Burak joined Sky News in 2006 from being a news anchor for BBC East Midlands Today after working on various local radio stations. Her broadcasting career started at the BBC Weather Centre before moving into news presentation. She has been able to “break the news” on several leading international stories, including the execution of Saddam Hussein, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, North Korea’s first nuclear test, the Indian train bomb attacks and last year’s Indonesian earthquake. 
Lukwesa, who combines her career with housework and being a mother, would like to encourage more African women to become news presenters. “It is very important for African women, both white and black, to get involved in the media. Those stories can be given a voice and reflect who is in the world and what the world is about”. ”.

Elsewhere, Rosemary Chileshe’s career has provided a blueprint for what a beauty title and its holder should be and she has become a focus for those aspirations of the UK African communities. Rosemary was a student from Sheffield, a comparatively provincial “backwater” – though she has since moved to Manchester, when in 2003 she was elected Miss Zambia UK, then one of the several competing national community titles. Sheffield, however, is noted for its production if steel, and there has been steel in Ms Chileshe’s character. She has transformed her title, and transformed the expectations of her compatriots. Rosemary returned home to compete in Zambia and qualified to represent her home country in the Miss World pageant in China in 2004. Rosemary has gone on to use her celebrity to strengthen and develop the embryonic pageant industry.
She has become a familiar guest at other promotions – always punctual (even though she has to travel from the other end of the country to London), always well-groomed and beautiful, and always polite and modest. Rosemary has become the epitome of what African beauty – and all beauty – should be. Unlike some other title-holders in the community, who seem to consider it to be their duty to discourage potential successors, she has stimulated newcomers to emulate her example. In 2007 she represented Zambia again in the Miss Universe pageant in Mexico City.
Rosemary showed Africans that they “could come good” at the highest level – and the floodgates were open. Yet Rosemary, who is a commercial property surveyor, has progressed considerably from her start in beauty pageants. It would require more space than is available to list her modeling achievements and her work as a goodwill ambassador to help in the fight against HIV/AIDS and poverty worldwide, in connection with which she addressed an international audience at a Commonwealth Forum to commemorate World Aids Day 2006.

Justina Mutale, who provided Rosemary’s first platform for public recognition, has similarly developed from being just the promoter of Miss Zambia UK. As CEO of Perryfield Promotions, she now holds the franchise for 15 international beauty pageants around the world including Miss Earth (Philippines), Miss Commonwealth (London), Miss Global International (Jamaica), World Miss University (South Korea), Miss Teen World (Ecuador and Australia), Miss Europe & World Junior (Czech Republic), Miss Teen Universe (Trinidad & Tobago) and the Face of the Universe (Ghana).
Pageant “mania” seems to have broken out world-wide as the “new” and “developing” countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe recognise the advantages of enhancing their national profile in challenging the hitherto hegemony of Miss World and Miss Universe. At the time of going to press Justina was due to accompany as chaperone 16 year-old Zambian beauty Anne Choolwe Malambo to the Miss Europe & World Junior 2007 in Ostrava (Czech Republic).
Justina said: “In the past only the title-holder was given an opportunity to represent Zambia at an international pageant. However, with numerous international beauty pageants spread across the world we want to spread our wings to all the four corners of the world by sending a candidate to fly the Zambian flag in each continent”.  And it does not end for the title-holders when they have given up their title -  as Emma Chishimba, an early Miss Zambia UK, went on to win Miss Commonwealth Africa.

Hildah Mulenga, chief executive of Miss Malaika UK, has shown that the UK Zambian community has room for two major promoters. The pageant draws contestants from all the African Diaspora and, similarly, provides opportunities for contestants other than the current title-holder to compete for the most prestigious international titles. Earlier this year Cynthia Muvirimi, a Zimbabwean midwife and First Princess Miss Malaika UK, won Miss Global International at the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, Jamaica. In doing so she took over the crown from her compatriot Ropafadzai Garise in putting Zimbabwe in the spotlight and promoting Zimbabwe tourism. Cynthia was accompanied by Brenda Mulenga (Hildah’s daughter) who, too, has “moved up” from being a contestant to helping with the administration, grooming the entrants.

Finding myself sitting at a recent press conference in London between Brenda Akot, Miss East Africa 2006, and Esta Lumutenga, Deputy Miss Caribbean & Commonwealth, I asked the former, somewhat naively, if all Ugandan women were so beautiful. She replied: “All African women are beautiful”. It is certainly impossible to argue with the evidence, and if Zambians are in the vanguard of the promotion and presentation of such high-profile activities the other communities are not far – if at all – behind.

Clayton Goodwin, NewAfrican Magazine, November 2007

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AFRICAN PROSTITUTION IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

Regular fare of the sexual menu

Africans are particularly popular

An influx of African prostitutes, more a tide than a trickle, within the last two to three years has transformed the appearance and practice of the vice trade in the United Kingdom. The effect has been felt, too, in many cities of Europe as far as Moscow where there are media reports of some hundreds of female African students staying on after their studies have finished to pursue the most basic profession. It is a far cry from the “Hi, dearie, do you want business” with which whores traditionally solicited business from darkened doorways on sordid London streets.

Fifty years ago exactly Sir John Wolfenden published his now celebrated report into Prostitution and Homosexuality in Britain (1957) which re-shaped the whole concept of the country’s morals. Conventional street-walking reached a pinnacle in the Second World War with hundreds of what had been perceived as being “respectable” women coming up to London for a share of the “yankee dollar” from well-paid American servicemen.Later the Messina Brothers imported French and continental tarts for that “exotic” touch.

The throng of importunate women clogging up the streets, especially around Soho and Piccadilly in London’s West End, was an embarrassment as the country sought to attract tourists in its recovery from the post-war economic and social depression. The Wolfenden Report led to the removal of women from the streets into a myriad of small rooms in the area bounded by Oxford Circus, Charing Cross and Leicester Square. Then there were few – if any – African or Caribbean prostitutes plying their trade openly – though a few nightclub hostesses operated in the twilight where music, dance, company and sex intertwined.

A few “black model offers charms for sale” notices began to appear in the windows of newspaper-shops in Paddington as immigration from the Commonwealth Caribbean attained its peak in the early 1960s. The periodic serial killers who preyed on  streetwalkers, forcing them into ever reducing “red light” areas and backstreets, culminated in the late-1970s and early-1980s in the “reign of terror” of Peter Sutcliffe (the “Yorkshire Ripper”), whose victims included Helen Rytka (killed) Marcella Claxton (assaulted but survived) – and Olivia Rievers, the woman who was in his car when he was arrested - of Caribbean heritage. Since then the practice of prostitution had remained unchanged for a quarter of a century …… until now. There is still street prostitution: the murders of five young women in Ipswich at the end of last year showed that only too well. Nevertheless that is essentially drug related, and flourishes away from the main centres of habitation.   

The influx of Africans has co-incided with a similar “flood” of Oriental and East Eiropean women “on the market”, all driven by the same economic circumstances, but it differs in two important respects. Although vice rings do exist among Africans, their participation in prostitution seems to be more free-lance and consensual. There are few “traders” in the accepted sense of the word – even though the pressures on “students”, who are not allowed by the terms of their visa, to accept viable “straight” work, may be considered to be indirect enforcement. The manner of their practice is also distinctive.

The “walk-up” rooms of Soho exist at the lower end of the market. The “black model” signs proliferate among those for “blonde”, “French”, “brunette” and other appellation of ethnicity, physical appearance or service. The circumstances can be appalling. The girl has to pay the “house” some £350 per day, and, then, accept whosoever (and almost for whatsoever) presents himself at the door for “quickie” sessions of little more than £25 a time. That means that a girl has to accommodate some twenty clients a day to make £150 for herself – little more than £7 each. Big money? Perhaps – but it comes at an even bigger physical and emotional price.

The newcomers are primarily from East, Central and Southern Africa rather than from the older, established Ghanaian and Nigerian communities. Those West Africans, and there are still a good number, are more likely to be from francophone Cameroon or Cote d’Ivoire moving across from France. A disproportionately large number are Zimbabwean. It is indeed ironic that while British politicians and businessmen seek to withdraw commerce from that country they, or, at least, a good proportion of their compatriots are investing unwittingly in the Zimbabwe economy through money paid for sexual services which then finds its way “back home”.

The women involved range inevitably from the destitute without the means, the talents or the opportunities to make a living otherwise to those who understand only too well that their physical assets offer them a very good opportunity to make a very good living. Yet it is almost a peculiarity of the African position that many of the women have other skills, often a career and even celebrity in another activity – usually in the arts – using prostitution as a second career. It is difficult to know whether they make their money from sex and pretend that it is from the sale of ethnic artifacts, or if it is the genuine selling of artifacts and services that puts them in direct contact with an alternative clientele.

Advertisements in the personal columns of local newspapers show that African prostitution is rife throughout London (and other towns and cities) from inner-city areas such as Hackney to suburban Bexleyheath. In some parts of North/East London the plethora of “black girl offers ….” outnumber by far those from other ethnic background. Whereas intimacy with an African/Caribbean girl was deemed once to be an occasional exotic “treat”, it has become now the regular fare of the sexual menu as much as curry/vindaloo is now the British “national dish”.

“Houses” proliferate throughout these areas in which African women, ranging in age from teenagers to matrons, offer themselves for selection to clients. For rates which may be well below those advertised – or given from an introductory phone-call – a visitor can expect to be offered almost any sexual service. A shrewd madam seeks to provide as wide a range as possible of physique and operating preference. It is usual for the girls to share their takings 50/50 with the “house” in exchange for accommodation, the equipment of the trade, and camaraderie.

The latter is important. The company of others in the same line of business is preferable to a lonely existence in a single flat, unable to talk about their work to neighbours or relatives, or to a precarious presence on the streets. (“Working girl” is the term which they, themselves, prefer). Even so mutual jealousy is endemic. Older women, or those who offer only a limited range of services, become readily envious of their younger, prettier and more pliable colleagues. Boredom and competition for punters destroys friendship and trust in those times that business is “slow” and funds become “scarce”.     

Younger ladies – especially those who are beautiful, well-educated and “cultured” – find richer earnings in the higher-class “escort agencies”. Contrary to common conception “escort girls” are less likely to accompany clients to social occasions or dinner-dates, though, of course, such assignments to occur, than to spend time with them in their home or a hotel room. The majority of clients are businessmen, tourists or professional men “up in Town” for excitement. Payment for “escorts” is correspondingly higher. Advertising in this sector – whether for “outcall” visiting or “in-calls” to the girl’s appartment – is made usually through specialist magazines or by leaving business-cards in telephone-boxes in areas frequented by tourists and businessmen. There is danger in going to an anonymous man at an anonymous location, but most escorts are represented by agents who take/advice the necessary precautions. Massage parlours, which may provide also a visiting service and can vary from the exquisite to the downright sordid, have been given a boost by the increasing popularity of the internet. Whereas there are “houses”, escort agencies and massage parlours which specialize in providing African women, it is more  usual to offer one or two Africans among a general choice of physical types.

Prostitution exists to provide services that “you do not get at home”. It is this desire for “something different” which attracts so many white men to African women. Especially in residential localities away from city West End centres many regular punter/prostitute relationships have developed in which an older white man has taken a protective interest in his new-found “girlfriend”  Africans are particularly popular as they are considered to be more loving than their Caribbean counterparts. Otherwise reports indicate that European men prefer to visit large black women, and often pay to be spanked, caned or whipped. The full-bosomed, big-backside African dominatrix has become a stable character of the sex trade. A psychiatrist would have a “field day” working that out – or maybe not?.

The medical profession has not noticed any significant increase in HIV/AIDS cases among heterosexual males in those areas in which East, Central and Southern African “working girls” are most prominent – in spite of the condition being associated with those regions and that the sexual activity provided being frequently unprotected. What would Sir John Wolfenden have thought of it all? It took a good many years for his recommendations to be implemented and work through the system. The impact of the African ladies has been more instantaneous.