Weekly Mail Reporter
POLICE say they are planning more raids on vice clubs after they swooped on a Johannesburg hotel last week, but acknowledge that they are more tolerant than in the past.
Club Caligula at Hillbrows Dorchester Hotel was raided by the Narcotics Bureau and other police units last Thursday. Three Zambian and three Thai women were arrested on prostitution-related charges and a stripper on a charge of public indecency. Another six Thai women were arrested for allegedly entering the country illegally.
Police this week said they were aware of an increase in vice clubs — and that there were plans for more raids — but that for the Narcotics Bureau it was not a priority on a par with hard drugs.
Witwatersrand police spokesman Lieutenant Jan Combrinck said although there was debate about the legalisation of public indecency, pornography and prostitution, the laws were still on the statute book and police would enforce them.
But he added: We have to go with the times. We cannot lock up a girl in a bikini if women on the beaches go topless.
He said the reason why Club Caligula had been singled out was because of information received that illegal immigrants were working as prostitutes, and there was suspicion their presence was connected to a sex slave ring.
That was the main reason; not because there were a few guys enjoying a beer and a girl who stripped, said Combrinck.
A legal expert this week predicted that laws relating to public indecency would be challenged in the Constitutional Court.
He said the new constitutional guarantee on freedom of expression would apply to public indecency offences. But none of the rights in the constitution is absolute; they are all subject to reasonable limits.
Where the line was eventually drawn would be up to the Constitutional Court.
He said plain nudity would be protected, subject to restrictions. There is a difference between taking off your clothes on the steps of the city hall and in a night club.
But where live sex was performed on stage, it was difficult to predict the line the court would take.
Those are the hard cases. Many countries prohibit that kind of thing, he said.