The house of prostitution

MASERU – THE pedestrian path to the house chokes with weeds, while a bigger entrance is reserved for cars on the other side.
An eight-roomed house, it is supposed to be a guest house for people in need of accommodation during the day or overnight, charging M40 for an hour and M100 for an overnight stay.

At the back, some families with children rent rooms where they stay. In reality, these families are staying at a brothel disguised as a guest house.
Players in the sex industry are using innovation to by-pass legal and cultural barriers.

Fully aware that sex trade or running brothels is illegal in Lesotho and is culturally frowned upon, some people in Maseru have come up with novel ways of doing business under the guise of providing rooms for couples.

It doesn’t matter whether a man brings a sex worker hooked from the street, a girlfriend or wife; there is always a room for them.
The number of such “guest houses” in Maseru is unknown, but thepost has managed to spot three — one in Maseru East, another in Sea Point while the third is in Motimposo.

Unlike regular brothels, these guest houses do not employ the services of prostitutes. They just provide accommodation.
When thepost visited one of the “guest houses” in Maseru, an employee in her late 20s sat outside enjoying sunshine. Children living at the same house played next to her.

Thinking our reporter was a client, she asked with excitement and all smiles, “Where is your partner?”

“The rooms are vacant unlike during some days when there is a queue,” she quickly added. thepost spent four hours at the guest house, monitoring movements there as couples streamed in.

The small-rooms are so close to each other that one can hear the noises coming from other rooms.
Inside one of the rooms that our reporter was granted access in is a ramshackle wooden bed and a mattress, a pillow and a plastic chair.

There were no condoms provided.
Customers have to bring their own.

A couple in their late 40s was already inside another room when thepost arrived, having booked for two hours. Another couple arrived in a Toyota Corolla vehicle.
The service provider approached the couple and after some small talk, the man produced a South African bank note and awaited his change before being ushered into a room.

The couple that had rented a room for two hours came out, the man munching smoked crunchy potato chips while the woman carried her handbag and a plastic bag.

The place is said to be busier during month-ends, weekends and holidays.
A woman who knows the ins and outs of the place described it as “a conflict-free place of pleasure as everyone is just there minding their own business”.

The woman said the guesthouse started two decades ago, way before 1996, though she does not remember the exact year.
It started as a mere single room but business was so good that the owner decided to add other rooms.

The owner is believed to be frail and in her 90s and her relatives are helping her run the business.

“During her time when she was active, people took exactly the time they paid for, not a minute later. Should that happen, she would knock on the door and throw them out as the place was very busy.

Even now, that is still being done depending on how busy the place is, as sometimes it gets so busy that people have to queue and are provided with chairs,” said the woman. Two employees work in shifts.

“We used to have a lot of clients during the day that daily we would make over
M1 000,” said one of the employees, asking for anonymity.

“But recently things have changed for the worse as we make M200 or M80 daily because we no longer have constant water supply.”

Clients are given cold, tap water to wash themselves after having sex and most of them are said to not use it as they complain that the water is dirty.

“Maintenance is key to the success of this business, otherwise this could be the end of it,” she said.

Another similar establishment established in 1998, in Sea Point, also started off as a single room but has now added another room and charges M30 per 30 minutes and M150 for an overnight stay.

In the same yard, there is a shebeen which used to bring more customers before the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Now I think people are broke,” an employee said.

“We don’t just welcome anyone. If people are unsure or are still negotiating in our presence we immediately dismiss them.

“Those who are heavily drunk are not welcome as well. We don’t want any problems,” she said.

The facilities are not registered and so their runners do not want to talk about them openly lest they attract the “wrong attention”.

“I don’t want to talk, the LRA will start demanding tax from me,” the manager of another establishment said.
Sex work and brothels are illegal in Lesotho under the Penal Code. Despite prostitution — the world’s oldest profession — being illegal it remains thriving in Lesotho’s towns and cities.

The majority of young girls and women say they were driven into prostitution to put bread on the table for their families in a country where the majority live on less than one United States dollar a day.

’Mapule Motsopa