The market for pirate video discs on the streets has taken on a new dimension with sales of DVDs containing explicit sexual content becoming more and more common. Vendors, knowing that pornographic material is illegal, sell such discs to the public under the cover of darkness.

During the day, vendors parade DVDs with covers indicating that they are music albums, movies, or TV series, with porn DVDs displayed at night when law enforcement rarely visits.

“You dare not take any of these discs at face value. Some of them labelled as music videos or otherwise,may contain pornographic material,” warned Belinda Chikasa of Chadcombe. She said that she once bought a disc whose cover picture depicted WWE wrestling only to find it was a porn movie. It was pure luck that she narrowly avoided playing the disc for the entire family.

A vendor who identified himself only as James (28) and sells porn DVDs says, “We always have ‘blue movies’ on hand. Some of them have innocent cover pictures, so that you can’t tell they are porn discs just by looking at them.”

Section 26 of the Censorship and Entertainment Control Act 27 prohibits the possession of obscene materials. “Articles (1) No person shall, without lawful excuse, have in his possession any – (b) recorded video or film material on which is recorded a film that is indecent or obscene or prohibited. (1a) Any person who contravenes subsection (1) shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding level six or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year or to both such fine and such imprisonment.”

James, who sells pirate DVDs along Robert Mugabe Road in the CBD, says during the day the discs are hidden but that they can be made available at a client’s request.

Although porn is nothing new, it has now become much more widely and easily available and adults as well as minors are being exposed to it indiscriminately as it is now available on any street corner. James explained that porn DVDs sell well at night at between $0.50 and $1 each, with men and adolescents, who are minors, constituting the greater proportion of buyers.

Edmos Mtetwa, a University of Zimbabwe School of Social Work lecturer says pornography negatively affects minors as it can promote delinquent behaviours. He added that it is human nature that the way we are socialised at a young age has an impact on our behaviour later on in life.

Fidelis Jaricha, a social counsellor, concurs and warns that pornography, with its addictive effects, poses a great danger to minors, who are inquisitive by nature and who because they generally do not get any formal sexual education, will end up learning about sex from what they see in porn movies.

He added that the best defence parents can take against pornography for minors is by having a close family life with parents monitoring what their children watch and educating them about how to use the internet. A further important way for parents to prevent minors being exposed to porn is to activate parental control settings on internet browsers.