Sex is a growing global industry and South Africa is no exception. It’s just the tax collector who is missing out, write Ferial Haffajee and Tangeni Amupadhi
At the Caligula nightclub near the bottom end of Hillbrow, where seedy gives way to slightly more respectable, the stripper lays out her props on the mirrored catwalk. A pink faux fur boa. Two round candles. And a little black top hat she sets pertly on her head of shiny curls.
She gets down to the groove of the song You Can Leave Your Hat On and five minutes later, all she is wearing is the hat and hot wax. Then she scampers off stage, leaving a burly bodyguard-cum-agent to stuff her props into a bag, ready for the next venue.
Two agents run Johannesburg’s exotic dancer network, where each girl can work up to four venues – tax free. Similar monopolies exist, with the phone and cellular lines advertised as belonging to individual call- girls, but actually run by two or three businessmen. They are the local players in a global sex industry valued at $20-billion a year.
South Africa commands a growing slice, but it’s revenue that the tax collector will never see.
Clubs like Caligula in Hillbrow and Neptunes in Durban’s Point Road rode the wave of the 1980s that introduced a sex industry to a largely conservative nation. Furtive glances and a dart through the doors characterised the early days.
Now the commerce in sex is growing up and displaying its wares. It has a high end that is thriving and an older low end of the market where saturation is forcing prices down. In the suburbs, porn chain- stores sit cheek by jowl with the local KFC franchise.
The global industry is also becoming increasingly interactive. In South Africa, many call-girls hire space on websites whose popularity is displayed by the advertisments they attract. With a turnover of many millions of rands, the local sex industry offers career paths and the options of self-employment or a salary.
Although still criminalised, the trade has gained recognition as an economic sector in some quarters. An embryonic trade union movement is organising 4 000 prostitutes on the streets of Cape Town and those who work in 120 massage parlours. The industry recently won the attention of the South African Revenue Service where tax officials are plotting ways of extracting revenue from an industry which goes largely untapped.
The officially illegal status even in the new South Africa means that the sex industry remains part of South Africa’s growing black economy. The jobs created in these economies will not be counted by the Jobs Summit – as with all jobs in the burgeoning informal sector, which spans the legal (fruit sellers and other hawkers) and the illegal (criminal networks).
With no room in national account-keeping, those making money from the trade in flesh and much of the commerce of pornography like movies, magazines and sex aids pay no tax and their foot soldiers can claim no protection or services from the state. Pimps thrive in this shadow economy and police regularly impose “cash fines” on prostitutes, although they produce no receipts and no charge sheets.
The government has put plans to decriminalise prostitution on the back- burner. Draft legislation pioneered by Gauteng’s former safety and security MEC, Jessie Duarte, has been referred to the African National Congress. Minister of Justice Dullah Omar says a policy move to decriminalise this pervasive trade is still under consideration. But his department wants to ensure first that there is no trafficking in women. It will measure the extent of prostitution and consider economic alternatives to prostitution.
This cautious official position is not mirrored by other authorities. The Commission on Gender Equality this week kicked off a campaign to decriminalise prostitution.
In South Africa’s major cities, local authorities, NGOs and churches work with the sex industry as a part of the urban landscape. Most health authorities invite the representatives of women in the sex industry to plan ways to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
In Johannesburg, the Rhema church, for example, provides sex education, condoms and spiritual sustenance to some of the 9 000 women prostitutes who make a living on the streets.
In Cape Town, Glynis Rhodes of the Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Task Force (Sweat) has just come back from negotiations with a farmer near Van Schoorsdrift who takes pot-shots at the women who wait for clients on the N7.
Incidents like these are growing increasingly isolated. Says Rhodes: “The community is becoming more tolerant. The industry is more upfront. There is an understanding that prostitutes provide an essential service.”
Competition and need are driving prices down and women as young as 12 years old are becoming prostitutes. In Cape Town retrenchments in the clothing and food industries have driven women workers on to the streets.
“Prices can start from R2,50 because R2,50 can buy you a packet of meaty bones,” says Rhodes. In Hillbrow’s joints, the bargaining starts at R100 and the deal is usually closed at half that price. In Durban, white women on Point Road can charge up to R200, while some black women on Umgeni Road charge R20.
Increasingly prostitution is being stratified into a low and a high end.
The Ranch is the pinnacle of the most lucrative end of the sex industry where BMWs and 4X4s line the lush driveway. Local and foreign patrons make their way through the thick plastic curtains into a world of high-class sex where a R200 entrance fee buys a buffet, drinks, cakes, a strip show and an introduction to the girls.
Women like Marianna from Kenya are paid commission – clients pay at central cashiers where a R450 price tag buys one hour’s sex, a massage and a romp in the sauna and jacuzzi. Says Marianna: “I came here three months ago to make quick money. There is a lot of money here.”
Women in this sector don’t always stay on commission. They go freelance where earnings can afford them a mink and manure lifestyle.
By contrast, there isn’t a lot of money in the local porn industry, which sociologist Mike Sarakinsky says mirrors a global slump. It’s a slump which has forced the closure of local magazines like Playboy and Penthouse in a market flooded by cheaper, more hardcore products from other international porn centres.
This globalisation of the sex industry also means that international networks have reached South Africa’s shores. Increasingly, says Sarakinsky, Eastern European and Asian networks are winning greater market share.
In South Africa the Triads, an international Chinese mafia, have diversified into prostitution, accounting for a flood of Chinese women in South Africa’s red light districts.
Says Ilse Paauw, the director of Sweat: “The sex industry is a significant part of South African society. And it’s growing – in all sectors.”