Women in Zimbabwe are said to be abducting and raping men for ritual purposes. In the past 11 months six men have been gang-raped by women, and as per the police the figure could be much higher, as victims are often too embarrassed to report the crime.
According to the official Chronicle daily, a 26-year-old policeman from Bulawayo was drugged and raped after he was offered a lift in a minibus with three female passengers.
“When he sat down, one of the passengers suddenly put a cloth saturated with a drug on his nose and he passed out,” the Scotsman quoted the paper as reporting.
When he regained consciousness he found the three women sexually abusing him, and afterwards he was abandoned outside the city, minus his mobile phone and $30.
“Clues given by the victim are being followed up,” police spokesman Bekimpilo Ndlovu said. Similar attacks have been reported in Harare, Gweru and Masvingo, some of them at gunpoint.
Last month two women forced a 44-year-old to have sex with them on a mattress he had just bought in Harare and was trying to transport back home to western Karoi.
Last November, two women locked an 18-year-old youth in Harare’s central Roman Catholic Church and raped him.
In most cases the victims are drugged and the women use condoms. Social commentators have suggested that traditional healers may have instructed the women to collect semen for use in ritual charms.
“These are people who want to make money because of poverty,” Gordon Chavunduka, former head of the Zimbabwe National Association of Traditional Healers told the Zimonline news agency. “It is very worrying, our society is in trouble,” he stated.