/ 17 March 1995

Pretoria is SA’s new porn capital

Michael McMurray

ONCE considered to be South Africa’s heart of conservatism, if not darkness, Pretoria is finding itself in a grip of jungle fever as copies of “Whoomp”, a video portraying all kinds of acts across the colour divide, topped the best selling lists last week.

“I’m all sold out, the white guys go crazy for it,” said Eugene Marais, part-owner of the Hustler sex shop in Sunnyside.

Ninety percent of Marais’ customers are white and it’s interesting to note that they seem to prefer the magazines that are directed at the black market, like Black Electric Blue, Home Girls or Black Sexsations.

“I even had one guy who wanted a strap-on black penis but all we had was the flesh colour. He was insistent on it being black though.”

Wearing blue denim trousers and a shirt partly unbuttoned to reveal a bush of hair on his chest, Eugene appears to be the embodiment of machismo. His customers are not all sex-crazed perverts as some may believe, but also include highly respectable professionals like doctors, lawyers and even a top ranking ANC official who is a subscriber to his service of adult magazines and videos.

It’s certainly true that over the last few years Pretoria has managed to move away from the Victorian era and openly embraced the sexual revolution of the nineties with astonishing speed. Of course it’s not fair to compare Church Street to the Walletjies area of Amsterdam, but wherever one walks in Pretoria nowadays one is bound to see at least three escort agencies — all with alluring promises of making the wildest dreams come true.