Chris Louw
HUSTLER shop owner Eugene Marais looked forlorn in his almost empty premises this week. Boxes with deflated “love dolls” and a scattering of erect rubber dildos were all that remained in his sex shop in Sunnyside, Pretoria, after a second police raid in six weeks.
Marais’ shop featured in the Weekly Mail & Guardian two weeks ago.
Gone were the videos that can still be openly rented from The Video Shop next door. Gone too are the latest issues of Hustler and Barely Legal, magazines that are freely available a mere 20m away in a corner cafe.
The narcotics bureau of the South African Police Service (Sanab) struck late on Tuesday evening, clearing the shop of everything regarded as remotely pornographic by Sergeant Naas Rademeyer, Pretoria’s self-appointed moral guardian.
While the rest of South Africa is caught up in the interregnum between oldstyle apartheid and the interim constitution, police in the Capital are laying down their own rules as far as pornography is concerned.
They maintain that Pretoria is different from Johannesburg and that different rules apply on the other side of the Apies River.
Marais’ shop was first raided on February 23 this year, a week after it opened. Acting on “complaints from the public”, Rademeyer took posession of everything in the shop faintly smelling of pornography — including a series of sex education videos and old copies of Hustler that the courts had unbanned.
The sex education videos were confiscated despite clear certificates printed on the back stating that they were found “not indecent” by the Publications Control Board.
Marais’ objections were allegedly brushed aside by Rademeyer, who insisted that he had more experience in pornography than the pornographer himself.
This was borne out by Sanab’s morality unit commanding officer, Captain Doepie du Plessis, who proudly informed the WM&G this week that his men saw so much sex that they had no need to take confiscated videos home for pleasure.
“I can assure you that this material contains nothing new for our members,” Du Plessis said, adding that “thousands and thousands of this type of material have already been confiscated”.
Sanab has decided that it is its mission to wipe out this kind of “filth” in what used to be the heartland of Afrikanerdom.
Sanab officers deny they are intent on driving Marais to bancruptcy. However, certain questions about the unit’s modus operandi thus far remain.
The material confiscated at the Hustler shop in February was kept in police safes for more than five weeks, despite a promise by Captain Willie Schutte of Sanab that articles not regarded as illegal would be returned within two weeks.
The material was returned only on Tuesday evening, but some of it was inexplicably confiscated again on the strength of another warrant issued immediately after Marais had signed an invoice stating that the material had been returned in good order.
“I lost thousands of rands through the police action,” a dejected Marais told the WM&G this week. “I honestly don’t know why they have decided to direct all their attention on me.”
Du Plessis was unrepentant when approached for comment. He denied that his unit was waging a campaign against the Hustler shop, and challenged anyone with information that his men were selectively acting against certain shops in return for favours from competing businesses to come forward.
“We would like to invite complainants to come forward with concrete evidence,” said Du Plessis. “These accusations are blowing over from Johannesburg where it is often used, particularly against Sanab.”
He said actions taken against the shop were based on complaints from the public.
Marais was adamant that he would not be chased out of town. He has instructed his lawyers to challenge Sanab. “I’ve come to Pretoria to stay,” he said.