As families disintegrate in the face of Aids and rural poverty bites deeper, a steady stream of job-seekers arrives in Johannesburg.
“After my parents died I lived with my aunt. At 13 she forced me to marry a man as old as my grandÂfather so I could live a comfortable life. I could not stand that man so I took a friend’s advice and came to Johannesburg,” said Ntombizonke* (28) from Bloemfontein.
“Without an identity document or work experience I could not find a job. A man offered me R1 000 to sleep with him and I started working as sex worker.”
Because the work they do is illegal, sex workers are offered no protection by the law and are easy targets for assault, rape and even murder. Sometimes the very people who are meant to uphold the law are the worst abusers.
“Policemen used to arrest us, at the police station they would klap us and swear at us, if we do not have money to pay for fines they rape us,” said Noluthando* (24), a former sex worker.
“Policemen protect one another so even if you report them nothing ever comes of it.” This leads to a cycle where the women are forced on to the streets to earn money to pay fines the only way they can — by servicing more clients.
Activists say sex work should be decriminalised, because this would improve working conditions and empower the men and women involved.
“The continued criminalisation of sex workers has contributed to the stigma, isolation and violation of the human rights of sex workers,” said Vivienne Lalu, of Sex Workers’ Education and Advocacy Taskforce (Sweat), an organisation that focuses on health and human rights issues.
“Sex workers are often forced to work in isolation and in remote areas, forcing sex work underground, hampering sex workers’ ability to organise themselves in any significant way to fight for their rights. These working conditions not only make them vulnerable to violence and abuse, but also make it difficult for intervention projects to locate them to do prevention work.”
Many of them are desperate and simply survive hand to mouth, weakening their ability to negotiate safer sex and condom use. “When a guy has a gun against your head forcing you to have unprotected sex with him there is nothing you can do, because there is no one there to protect you. The pimps beat you up and there is no law protecting you because of the job you are doing,” said Noluthando.
Cornelius* (30) said there is a huge gap between knowledge and behaviour. “As long as the buyer keeps buying, the seller will keep selling. No one ever thinks of the buyer, everyone is more concerned about the seller.There are rich men from rich areas of Johannesburg that come to men and women like myself and offer to pay big amounts to have sex with us without a condom, offering us instant cash.”
Young children are also being lured into the sex industry: “I came to Johannesburg looking for my aunt. I did not know what work she did until she introduced me and my cousin to sex work at the age of 16,” said Noluthando.
Girls and boys are made to work at brothels from a young age, they are often recruited by friends or older sex workers. The decriminalising of adult sex work would make it easier to identify children who are being sexually exploited; adult sex workers could help to identify children working in the industry because many say they do not agree with the sexual exploitation of children.
“Decriminalising sex work would place equal responsibility to practise safe sex on the clients, and not place the burden only on the sex workers. Criminalised sex work makes it more imbalanced because these women lose more power,” said Lalu.
The clandestine nature of their work means sex workers often take clients home with them, which means their children are exposed to sex and violence from an early age, perpetuating a cycle of poverty, violence and addiction.
“In Hillbrow we see more then 10 people living in a two-bedroom flat. Such an environment tends to be unhealthy and exposes children to sex at a very young age,” said Khanyisile Motsa, MD of Berea-Hillbrow Home of Hope. “Sex and drugs become normal to them, as they see it every day.”
The Home of Hope offers social services to HIV/Aids-infected and affected women and children and also helps to rehabilitate and accommodate sexually exploited women and children through education and skills development.
Sweat says decriminalisation of commercial sex work by consenting adults would mean the industry could be regulated like any other. “We want sex work to be acknowledged as any form of work and have all labour laws apply to this work as with any other work,” said Lalu.
Khopotso Nakin is the director of New Life Centre, an organisation that works with sex workers, some of whom are children. “We work with peer counsellors, some of whom used to be sex workers, and we teach sex workers about their rights. We do outreach with a specific focus on HIV/Aids awareness and prevention, but one of the difficulties we face is accessing sex workers because the industry is still so underground.”
* Not their real names