Rehana Rossouw
The prostitute’s corpse was found buried upside down in bushes near Milnerton in November 1995, her legs and buttocks protruding above the ground. The post mortem revealed she had probably been buried alive.
This month another body was found in bushes near Durbanville, and police announced a serial killer was on the loose in Cape Town. He had murdered at least nine prostitutes, strangling them with their clothes, and brutally torturing three before they died. The Cape began to believe it had its own Yorkshire Ripper.
The killing spree began in 1992, but it has gained momentum recently, with five murders in the past five months. Two bodies have not yet been identified. All but one of the victims were found within a 20km radius, in the suburbs north of Cape Town. All had been strangled, but none were sexually assaulted.
The police have stepped up their manhunt, forming a task force which last week visited prostitutes’ haunts, inviting the women to visit police stations to have their fingerprints and photos taken and their personal details recorded on a database. The information will be used to keep track of women and, if the killer is not caught, help to identify his victims .
More than 200 frightened prostitutes responded and were interviewed by police last week, volunteering information about themselves and offering new clues about the killer.
This unusual co-operation between police and prostitutes has raised hopes of continued sympathy for sex workers from officialdom. Police spokesman Captain John Sterrenberg said, however, that Section 20 of the Sexual Offences Act, which prohibited acts of indecency for reward, was still on the statute books and police would have to comply with the
In the Western Cape, 107 women were arrested for soliciting in public in 1994 and 506 in 1995. Last year’s figures were boosted by 128 arrests in September when police responded to complaints from the public.
Ilse Pauw, co-ordinator of the Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Task Group (Sweat), welcomed the police’s new co-operative approach to nabbing the killer by working with prostitutes and said she hoped police protection would continue in the future.
The organisation was aware of numerous incidents where women prostitutes were abused by their clients. “But they tell us they can’t go to the police station to report what happens to them because they were involved in illegal activity at the time of the assault,” Pauw said. “What they want is to be taken seriously and their cases to be treated equally with other women.”
While the decriminalisation of prostitution would improve the service prostitutes receive from police, Pauw said it would probably take time to remove the stigmas attached to the
“The discrimination against sex workers is so entrenched that the stigmas won’t disappear overnight. But if we can overcome the major difficulty — having access to the police – — then we would have come a long way.”
Pauw said while police deserved credit for their efforts to catch the serial killer, she had no doubt that their reaction time had been slower because the victims were prostitutes.
“We are encouraging women to go to the police and give them their co-operation. If they do not feel comfortable going to a police station, they could come to us instead and we will liaise with police.”
Pauw said while it was assumed women working street corners were more at risk, all prostitutes were vulnerable to assault or murder by their clients.
“Sex workers are not disempowered women, they have a lot of power. Some women would rather work the corners than at an agency. It gives them financial and personal freedom. They can decide when to work, how long to work and how much to charge. They don’t have to give anyone a cut of their proceeds.
“It’s too simplistic to say they’re safer at an agency or working from home. Women who work for agencies have to go out with the client, and he could take them anywhere.
“On the streets, of course they go off with clients all the time and once they enter the clients’ space it puts them in a vulnerable position. Discrimination also has an impact on their safety. If the clients knew the women could report abuse and assaults to the police with impunity, I have no doubt sex workers’ safety would improve tremendously.”
Pauw said Sweat would undertake a major project this year to provide workshops to sex workers where they can discuss and learn the implications of decriminalisation, or the legalisation of prostitution. “People don’t always understand their options and we want to ensure they make informed decisions.”
Sweat’s campaign gained national support last Friday when they attended a workshop hosted by Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), Pietermaritzburg region, to discuss the decriminalisation of commercial sex work.
Workshop participants formed a network known as Decpro (the decriminalisation of prostitution network), which will lobby government to decriminalise the Sexual Offences Act.
“This section makes it a crime to be a commercial sex worker, and is objectionable on several grounds. The provision is constitutionally problematic in that it conflicts with certain provisions in the Bill of Rights,” said workshop co-ordinator Karen
“The effectiveness of the provision in eradicating prostitution is questionable. The viability of enforcing such a provision is problematic, given that the prohibited activity usually occurs in private.”