Human trafficking is an evil as terrible as the Atlantic slave trade of the past, Chief Justice Pius Langa said on Friday.
”It is an evil as terrible as the slave trade of the past and it requires a concerted response from civil society and the government,” he said at the International Association of Women Judges Conference in Boksburg.
”During the entire Atlantic slave trade, 25-million people were forced into slavery. Today there are an estimated 200-million people in conditions of slavery worldwide.
Langa said that even though slavery had been abolished over a century ago, practices like human trafficking kept its legacy alive.
Langa said at least 800 000 to 900 000 people were trafficked annually around the globe.
At least 28 000 children have been trafficked to South African cities for purposes of sexual exploitation.
The majority of South African trafficking victims were refugees that were already in the country or came from the Southern African Development Community region, Thailand, China and Eastern Europe.
”Refugees from other African countries already in South Africa often arrange for close female relatives to join them.
”Once these women receive asylum-seeker status, their male relatives force them into prostitution.”
Langa said these women were often caught in a double bind when trying to access the law to help them.
”[They] are then placed in the unenviable position of choosing between deportation to an inhospitable home or remaining ‘enslaved’ but ‘with’ their family.”
Langa also said about 1 000 Mozambiquan girls and women were trafficked annually in South Africa.
He said they were lured with promises of lucrative jobs or picked up at taxi ranks while searching for a lift.
”After crossing the border, many women are subjected to an ‘initiation’ rape at transit houses near the border.
”The girls are then sold as ‘wives’ to men on the mines in the West Rand for about R650 or to South African brothels for R1 000.”
Langa said gaps in South African laws meant it was mainly the trafficking of children and sexual trafficking that was covered.
New legislation aimed at targeting all forms of trafficking was in the pipeline, he said.
However, Langa said trafficking could not be solved by legislation alone.
”Trafficking is a result of very serious social problems,” he said.
”Trafficking in Southern Africa is generally attributed to extreme poverty, unemployment, war, lack of food and traditional practices that commodify women and make their sale acceptable.”
Langa also said organised crime syndicates and a demand for sex workers drove trafficking.
”As long as these realities exist it will be extremely difficult to abolish trafficking completely, but it is equally dangerous to use these realities as an excuse for not going the whole hog in fighting trafficking,” he said.
”[Fighting human trafficking] will require a combination of extended research, legislative measures, improved policing and prosecution practices and judicial awareness.”
Langa said only this kind of multi-pronged approach could hope to fight what has become the third biggest profiteering organised crime after drugs and armaments.
”Traffickers can make profits on drugs only once; they can sell the same person again and again and profit infinitely,” said Langa in explaining trafficking’s predominance. — Sapa