Desist temptation to engage in sextortion
By Tony Nkhoma
MAINTAIN or exceed your intellectual capability which earned you a place in the university and desist the temptation to engage in sextortion, an advocacy organisation has encouraged female students.
Nyapachuma Memorial Foundation (NMF) Founder Dr Emily Sikazwe warned the students in the country to avoid engaging in behaviour that could easily endanger their future.
Dr Sikazwe challenged the students in higher learning institutions across the country to courageously expose perpetrators of sextortion.
“We know that power holders in universities, males and females, sometimes use power over students. However, we are also aware that young women and men in universities also can be perpetrators of sextortion,” Dr Sikazwe said.
Dr Sikazwe challenged Universities and College staff in the country to reduce their power of coercing young female students into sextortion.
“A vice that coerces young people to give their bodies for grades, to give their bodies for higher marks, to give their bodies for accommodation, to give their bodies to join a club, to give their bodies so that they are seen to be the most intelligent among others,” Dr Sikazwe said.
Sextortion refers to the practice of academic staff, mostly lecturers, coercing female students into sexual affairs in exchange for good grades.
Addressing students at Cavendish University in Lusaka, Dr Sikazwe, a gender activist, urged the students to guard one another and be on the lookout for perpetrators of sextortion.
She said sextortion was emerging as a serious vice in learning institutions and should be rooted out.
“Sextortion must be rooted out of every institution of higher learning. Sextortion is a vice that makes young people do things that they shouldn’t do,” Dr Sikazwe said.
She urged young female students not to keep silent on people victimising them.
Dr Sikazwe said by choosing to remain quiet, students were giving power to perpetrators of sextortion and the fight towards the vice became compromised.
She urged male lecturers not to victimise young male students by going after their girlfriends.
“It also happens that if a young woman has a boyfriend and that young woman is eyed by a lecturer or a tutor, her boyfriend suffers. So again, young men also suffer from this vice,” Dr Sikazwe said.
She warned students to use their capabilities in universities or colleges in the similar manner they did in high schools and not fall prey to sextortion in exchange for grades, accommodation or food.
“You worked hard and now you are saying you are not capable, therefore you sell your body or you sell your sister in order for you to get marks. It is bad because you are saying you are not intelligent enough to get the marks that you deserve unless you sleep with a man or unless you recruit a girl for a lecturer,” she said.
Dr Sikazwe counselled students that sextortion is a serious mental issue that they should not entertain.
“Those are mental health issues. You are not thinking properly. And so we want to dialogue about this. We want to talk about this. We want you to tell us what the drivers of sextortion are,” Dr Sikazwe said.
