NIKIWE BIKITSHA: HIGH HEELS - Jun 04 2010 16:05

'Not everyone likes sex." This was an amusing and rather unconvincing reply by Brazil's coach Carlos Dunga while taking questions at a press briefing after the team's arrival in South Africa last week.

He was being quizzed about whether his players would be allowed to indulge in carnal pleasures during the tournament. He ventured that he would leave it up to the players to decide.

The Argentinians, on the other hand, have been advised by their team doctors they can also do "the beast with two backs" -- but only with regular partners or beasts, if you will, and this should preferably not be accompanied by other excesses, such as champagne and cigars.

So let the games begin then! I can hear the imagined chorus from the countless women and reportedly 40 000 sex workers who are here for precisely that -- to entertain soccer players and the throngs of accompanying fans who are expected to flock into the country for the beautiful game.

To lubricate this copulation, the South African government has announced that it will distribute one billion condoms during the tournament. A billion. That's nine zeros. Gosh. Are they really expecting that much fornication to be taking place in just one month?

In disbelief at the Health Department's largesse, my colleague Jeremy Maggs and I decided to calculate how far these condoms would go and whether we really needed that many.



So, with a billion free condoms doing the rounds, tourists are likely to have sex five times a day. That leaves little time for watching the football, doesn't it?

After the Health Department announced the freebie, I posed this question to my Facebook friends: With so many condoms being made available, what exactly are people here to do? Watch the footie or play footsie footsie?

Many took offence at the Health Department's gesture, saying that by making so many condoms available the government is creating the impression that South Africa is a permissive country, where sex tourism is promoted to the detriment of women and children.

Others glibly retorted that one could watch only so much football. A match is just 90 minutes after all, so a "shag-a-thon", as one friend called it, would be the best form of recreation in the remaining 22 hours.

I think it is very disingenuous of South Africans to be sanctimonious about the provision of condoms given our sky-high HIV infection rates. It is clear that people are having sex, lots of it, and lots of it is unprotected sex, with devastating consequences. Making the condoms available doesn't condone licentious behaviour but is a plea to South Africans and our visitors that, although whatever happens in their bedrooms is their business, protection is an absolute must. This is simply a tactic to safeguard the nation's sexual health.

Furthermore, Aaron Motsoaledi, the health minister, who recently began a major drive to promote "the breast is best" policy among the moms of newborns, doesn't really want to be singing the same tune some nine months after the World Cup.

As for the soccer players themselves, their wandering eyes and straying is legendary. Whether they are fastidious about using condoms, we don't know, but we need not look far for an example of promiscuity in the world of high-profile, super-achieving sports personalities. The May issue of Vanity Fair magazine has spoken to four of Tiger Woods's concubines who, without exception, all say that in his disturbing Lothario ways he never used a condom. This is a man with a wife, nogal.

I think the health department is displaying foresight by trying to encourage good behaviour because, whatever Dunga might believe about people's appetite for sex, there will clearly be lots of it. So people should either zip it or wrap it.