Young girls selling sex in hotels, young boys selling sex on the street – child abuse is rife in South Africa
Stuart Hess
PLAYING in the street with her friends, she looks like any ordinary four-year-old girl. Wearing a dirty pink polkadot dress, Thembi (not her real name) plays happily, but her smile disappears when she sees three men approach. There have been men in her past who came to her for only one reason: sex.
For more than nine months, her mother “rented” her out to men for R200 a session. Thembi endured it until last September when she was found in a room at the Diplomat Hotel, in downtown Johannesburg, being raped by a well-built middle-aged man. She was screaming.
Tutu Mgulwa, president of South Africa Stop Child Abuse (Sasca) had heard that young children were being used for sex at the hotel. He and other members of the organisation had gone to investigate. They went from room to room, and found Thembi.
“When we burst into the room we found this big man on top of her,” Mgulwa said. They pulled him off her, and turned him over to the police. He was released within a week uncharged, Mgulwa said.
Thembi is receiving psychiatric and medical treatment – for injuries to her genitals – at the Zamokuhle abuse clinic in Soweto. So far, she has told her rescuers of three rapes she remembers from her nine months of horror.
Her mother came to visit once, at the request of Thembi’s grandmother, but Thembi cried and turned away.
Glenys van Halter, co-ordinator for the child advocacy organisation Children in Violence, said Thembi is not alone. Thousands of children in Johannesburg have been used as sex slaves by wealthy businessmen and drug dealers.
Some are runaways who drift to Johannesburg and get caught up in the trade. Some, like Thembi, are pimped by parents too desperate for money to care how they earn it. Mgulwa said he also knows of young women working as agents for child prostitution rings in Johannesburg who “recruit” schoolgirls from the townships and offer them money to work in the city.
“It really leaves one sick to see so many children endure such hardship,” said Van Halter.
This week the Mail & Guardian visited three places in Johannesburg where girls and boys – some as young as eight years old – proferred sex for as little as R10.
Palesa, who claims to be 17 but looks much younger, stops to talk in the second-floor passage of the Europa Hotel near Joubert Park. She turned to prostitution, she said, to earn money because her parents would not buy her clothes or give her money. “My mother knows what I’m doing and has tried to take me home,” she said, “But I don’t want to go because there’s nothing for me with my parents.”
Palesa said many of the girls in the Europa were younger than she. Hotel management does not allow them to leave between 4 pm and 8 the next morning. “That’s when we must work.” she said.
Loud music blares from a disco on the first floor, as one prospective client chats up a pretty young girl.
“You know the younger ones are the best,” says another, a portly man, whose breath is rank with alcohol.
“I am one of the lucky ones because I can choose who I want to sleep with,” said Palesa, adding that she liked bigger, older men. “The children are told which men to sleep with.”
“I try to help the younger children if they’ve been raped,” she said, “But there’s nothing I can do to stop the men from doing anything they want.”
Many girls working at the Europa come from KwaZulu-Natal. Some are as young as eight, Palesa said. The young ones are given drugs to make them sleep during the day.
Hotel manager Terence John denied there were prostitutes or young girls in the hotel. “Nobody under 18 is allowed on the property,” he said. Asked about the young girls two floors up, he shook his head. They just come for the disco, he said.
Palesa divides her time between the Europa and the hotel next door, Little Roseneath, where more young girls “work”. At “the Rose” a tiny sign above the entrance reads “No under 18s allowed”. However the M&G found girls as young as nine who offered clients sex – R30 for sex on demand and R120 for an all-night session.
Three young girls sharing a small first- floor apartment offered to entertain their three male visitors for the night for R360. They were Thozama, who was ironing, Christina and Thandi, who sat on the bed. The room reeked of urine, cockroaches crawled across the wall and on the floor. Christina (13) arrived in Johannesburg from Cape Town two weeks ago. She left home because her parents beat her, she said.
Thandi points to Christina and says, “She’ll sleep with you for R30.”
All three girls said they take precautions during intercourse, but they would make exceptions. “They have to pay more if they want it without condoms,” said Thandi.
The girls said “on a good day” they would see about eight or nine men. The money they earn is used to pay the rent, which changes by the month, and sometimes is as high as R800.
At the Diplomat Hotel hundreds of young girls milled about, in the corridors, at the bar, in the foyer. Security at the hotel was strict. Guards conducted a thorough body search of clients. Prostitutes at the Diplomat are more expensive, Mgulwa said, the business is run more efficiently.
Hotel manager Martha Hleza denied that prostitutes operated from the hotel. “We only have schoolgirls staying here,” she said. “We don’t allow small children into the hotel without supervision.” But Mgulwa says many child prostitutes operate from the Diplomat. This, he says, is where he found four-year-old Thembi.
Hotel owner Nick Oosthuizen said he was unaware of illegal activity at the hotel. “I know nothing about prostitution at the Diplomat, people come and go all the time,” he said.
Mgulwa said it is the system that needs to be changed, because the law as it stands protects child abusers. Child abusers walk free, he said, citing the case of a Sandton businessman against whom six complaints have been filed. The man has yet to be charged. “If the system continues like this we’ll have a society of sick people,” he said. “Children should be secured like diamond and gold,” said Mgulwa. “If the children are our future, we have to provide them with security.”
One police child protection unit commander, Captain Edward Hutcheons, said the unit was unaware of child prostitution at the three hotels. “Any cases of prostitution are handled by the South African Narcotics Bureau. We will assist them with cases involving children,” said Hutcheons.
He said investigations would start immediately. “We have to act against the management of these hotels.”