Proposals ranging from a complete ban on all forms of ”adult entertainment”, to planning for legalised sex work were made to a Cape Town city council task group on Tuesday.
The councillors have been given the job of coming up with recommendations for land use policy on ”adult” businesses, which include sex shops, escort agencies, massage parlours and revue bars.
Cape Town is believed to be the first city in South Africa to attempt to develop a policy in this field.
At public hearings on Tuesday, the Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce (Sweat) said sex work was part of the adult entertainment industry.
Given the fact that the South African Law Commission was reviewing the law on prostitution, illegal activities should be integrated into any future zoning scheme.
”We feel that this will address the ambiguities and contradictions currently existing in regularising the industry,” said Sweat’s advocacy co-ordinator Althea MacQuene.
”It is an opportunity for the city to provide a non-judgemental, pragmatic and proactive approach to land use management of the adult entertainment industry.”
She said adult entertainment premises that complied with local planning laws and national legislation should be treated similarly to other commercial enterprises, and local authorities should be consistent in their planning decisions.
Sweat did not agree that special consent procedures should be followed where an adult establishment in a commercial zone was near a residential area, a school or a church. This would be discriminatory.
Several Christian groupings also made presentations at Tuesday’s hearings.
Christine McCafferty, who hit the headlines last year with her allegedly homophobic book The Pink Agenda, said in a submission on behalf of Christian Liberty Books that adult entertainment should be relegated to light industrial areas of the city only.
She said overseas experiences showed that sexually-oriented businesses were inevitably accompanied by problems including plummeting property values, increased crime, sexual harassment and litter that included used condoms.
Like Sweat, she urged the council to devise a framework that would also apply if sex work was legalised or decriminalised.
A spokesperson for His People Church in Cape Town, Errol Naidoo, told the hearing that council’s primary concern should be the safety of women and children, and there could be no doubt that pornography promoted the victimisation of women.
Asked where adult businesses should go, he said: ”Nowhere, if I had my way, nowhere … I’d like to see it eradicated from our society completely.”
Anthony Liebenberg, pastor of the Atlantic Christian Assembly, said his church was in the middle of a de facto red light district in Sea Point.
He described the hearing as a ”travesty”, and said it was a matter of concern that the council was considering legalising the sex industry, and that public representatives had a responsibility to build lives and communities, not promote their dehumanisation.
He added that ultimate sexual fulfilment could come only from a faithful marriage between a man and a woman.
”There’s no way I could even suggest legitimising a portion of our city… there is no portion of our city that can be allocated to this industry,” he said. – Sapa