After discovering that HIV/Aids is killing up to three truckers a day, the road freight industry launched a sex education project
Khadija Magardie
It is early evening and there are already more than 15 prostitutes standing around the rest area for truckers at Warden, along the N3 highway to Durban.
With a deafening hoot and an engine roar, a truck appears around the bend. Two of the women, both in their late 20s, start shouting excitedly. One of them grabs the other by the arm, and they run off in the direction of the truck, which slows to a halt to greet them. The driver is a regular customer.
The rest area, which is just around the corner from the Dutch Reformed Church in the conservative farming town, is a hub of activity every night, its relatively isolated location making it the ideal site for a thriving sex trade.
A dilapidated shack nearby is the “hang- out spot” for the truckers and the sex workers who literally follow them around the country, offering their services. Many of the prostitutes “leap-frog” with the truckers, hitching a ride with one trucker to a particular truck stop, working the entire night there, and getting a lift to another stop in the morning. Others have made the shack, which has no electricity or running water, their permanent home.
Wendy (27) leaves her only child with her mother in Warden township, and seldom goes home. Wendy has sex with up to two truckers a night for a fee of R60 each.
Sometimes she, like her peers, “travels” with the trucker, providing sexual services – for this, she charges R150. “I don’t like what I am doing,” she says, “but I have no money, and no choice.”
Like the nearly 30 commercial sex workers milling around the parked trucks on this particular evening, Wendy admits she is scared of the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases (STDS), particularly HIV/Aids. And like the others, she knows that condom use can greatly decrease her chances of contracting the deadly virus.
Yet all the women say they will not refuse to have sex with a man who refuses to wear a condom: “You cannot say no when you need the money.”
Encouraging safer sex is just one of the items on the agenda of the group of Aids trainers who travel around the country visiting what they term the “hot spots” – particularly along the N3 from Johannesburg to Durban, and the N1 from Johannesburg to Cape Town.
One trucker makes a lewd remark about condoms being too small for him, as the women seated next to him laugh. But the trainers say they thrive on such interactive sessions, which are the best and most honest ways of getting opinions.
Trainer David Wessenaar hands around a set of photographs showing people with advanced- stage STDs, and asks the group if they are familiar with any of the diseases. Perhaps not surprisingly, the majority of the sex workers, and not the truckers, are vocal in shouting out the names and symptoms of the various STDs.
A trained nurse is also on hand to advise the women on treatment. The trainers hand out information packs, which contain condoms, including the female condom.
White says far more attention needs to be devoted to making clinic services accessible to prostitutes. “If you have an STD, the risk of contracting Aids shoots up by almost 80%.”
The women say they are discriminated against because they are sex workers, and because their infections often recur. Most complained that nurses at the Warden clinic often refused to treat them properly, if at all, and they were often told to “voertsek”.
A recent survey undertaken by the National Bargaining Council for the Road Freight Association predicts that HIV/Aids will virtually destroy the trucking industry in the next few years, unless serious policy interventions take place. Significantly, the highest rate of infections nationally are in people between 19 and 35 years old, but among truckers, the older the age group, the higher the infection rate.
As part of “Operation Hot Spot”, there are on-site treatment clinics in several places along the highway, such as at Harrismith and Colesberg. According to the survey results, the introduction of more on-site clinics would make it easier for truckers and sex workers to get treatment. More than 96% of the respondents said they were even willing to pay for such a service.
Some names have been changed