Violence Against Female Sex Workers in South Africa

Submitted by: Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Task Force, Capetown, South Africa

Input for: Expert Group Meeting: "Violence Against Women: A statistical overview, challenges and gaps in data collection and methodology and approaches for overcoming them," 11-14 April 2005, Geneva, Switzerland

Topic: Sex Work and Violence Against Women

The Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Task Force (SWEAT) is a non-profit organisation based in Cape Town that promotes the health and human rights of sex workers. SWEAT advocates for decriminalisation of sex work in South Africa. SWEAT recently completed a qualitative research project, "An exploration of the help seeking behaviour of sex workers in the Cape Metro pole, SWEAT, 2005." Seventeen sex workers were interviewed about their experiences for this study.

The legal context

Sex work is illegal in South Africa and the Sexual Offences Act prohibits the selling of sex and all related activities at present. However sex workers in South Africa are rarely arrested under this Act. It is easier for the police to prosecute sex workers for minor offences and to use local municipal bylaws referring to loitering, littering or even obstructing traffic in this regard.

Sources of information

Seventeen sex workers talked about their experiences for SWEAT's recent study. Many of the participants spoke of their difficulties with the police. Sex workers working on the street are more vulnerable to violence and harassment at the hands of the police because they are much more visible than those who work indoors. The experiences discussed here were mostly reported by street-based sex workers.

In addition SWEAT monitored arrests in four different areas of Cape Town between February and July 2004. Sex workers indicated that they had been arrested as often as four or five times in a month. Some individuals said that they had been arrested almost every day. When sex workers are arrested they are usually held for 48 hours, fingerprinted and released without appearing before a magistrate.

Sex workers are also often fined for minor offences like loitering, loitering with intent to solicit and littering. These fines vary between ZAR50 to ZAR500 (US $5 — 50). Sex workers have complained that they do not get receipts for fines. Sex workers have also reported to us that their clients have often been asked to pay a bribe to the police.

Sex workers experience other serious difficulties with the police and report that they have been harassed, insulted, physically abused, arrested when they were not working, or forced to have sex with members of the police.

Seven of the seventeen sex workers interviewed told SWEAT that they had experienced physical violence at the hands of the police. They experienced being thrown into the police van when arrested, being beaten by the police, being dropped off far from where they work in a deserted area and being sprayed with teargas. One person described what happened in the following way:

"I have a problem now with the police. We are looking for safety, but they just spray gun us or they beat us up."

Sex workers in police custody are often refused permission to make a telephone call to let their families know where they are. We have had reports of people being refused medical treatment for burn wounds and a dislocated shoulder while in police custody. One sex worker spoke of the bad conditions in which they are held when they are arrested:

"The police are also a problem, if they arrest you on Friday they will keep you in the cells until Monday and you will be arrested without seeing the magistrate. We do not get food in the cells. We only get two slices of dry bread. You do not even get a chance to wash."

Another sex worker related her experience of the police asking her for sexual favours in return for not being arrested:

"They want to come … for free and tell you that there will be a warning when they pick the others up. I've been through a lot of that, but it doesn't interest me at all. I'm here to just make my money, you know. Not here to give 'freebies' for anybody. You know, at the end of the day, a whole police station comes to you and say, 'Okay, she's done it for free for you, so all of us here must come for sex now'."

Some individuals spoke of incidents when the police arrested them even when they were not working, just because the officer knows them. Sex workers who live and work in the same community face the threat of arrest every day. The implication is that women cannot even go to the shop or walk in the communities where they live. One of the participants described her experience of being harassed and insulted by a police officer in the area that she lives:

"So he came up to me and without even talking nicely, he just came up to me and said, 'Move!' Like, in Afrikaans he said, 'Just move away from here now you, you whores mustn't stand on the street like that'. I said: 'but what, what if a person is going to the shop? You're still going to say that we're working?' Because they picked us up the other day… I was going to the shop and they picked me out and, plenty times… but I wasn't working. I was walking and they, by knowing our faces, they think that every time they see us on the streets, we're working."

As a result of this treatment sex workers mistrust the police and they are reluctant to approach police for assistance when they have been victims of violence or rape. Past research has found that the police exert a great deal of power over sex workers by threatening to arrest them. (Wojciciki & Malala 2001) This was similar to what we found when we talked to sex workers. One individual indicated that it is difficult to report violence from members of the public or clients because sex work is illegal. Someone else indicated that the police threaten to arrest them when they try to report matters:

"Yes, I tried to ask for help, but they just said you fat 'cunt', we cannot help you, instead we can arrest you."

Persons engaged in sex work are often traumatised and humiliated by the treatment they receive from the police when they report having been raped. (Wojciciki & Malala 2001) In two cases in this research sex workers reported that the police laughed at them when they tried to report a crime. In one of these cases two women who worked at an escort agency tried to report a rape but the police just laughed at them and refused to take their complaint.

"And we reported it to the police, they just laughed at us… No. We were made to sit in the waiting room. And I just remember this girl saying she wants to speak to the detective and then he didn't want to help. So then she wanted to speak to the man in charge, he didn't help…"

One participant indicated that they feel very insecure about asking the police for help and that they are never sure if the police will help them because they are sex workers. The other participant felt sure that the police would not assist her if she had to say she had been raped:

"I don't think the police will believe anything, if I have to go there and tell them I'm raped now, I'm a sex worker, they're going to think that you then, in the job, you're then doing these things for money, so how can you say you have been raped, that, things like that, that's why I'm very scared, that's why I avoid being raped and stuff like that, but you can't avoid, so if you must get raped you rather, keep quiet, because I know the police are not going to believe"

SWEAT's response

SWEAT's broad approach to dealing with the police uses a human rights framework. One of our key arguments in favour of decriminalisation is the ongoing human rights infringements that sex workers are exposed to by the very authorities that are supposed to protect them. We also argue that the ongoing targeting, arrest and release of sex workers is a waste of police resources that could be better utilised elsewhere.

It is crucial that sex workers are informed of their rights and understand the legal procedure surrounding arrests. It also helps if sex workers are aware of some of the actions they can take to avoid arrest and protect themselves. To this end SWEAT produces informational pamphlets and engages in discussions around safety with sex workers during our outreach work.

SWEAT helps sex workers who want to make a complaint about police mistreatment by taking their legal statements and going with them to the police station when they make the complaint. We explain the process that needs to be followed when they want to make complaints against the police and assist them with forwarding their complaint to the police internal investigations unit. SWEAT staff members remain involved by following up on the progress of these individual complaints.

In the past law enforcement officers have said that they arrest sex workers largely when community members complain about sex work, but recently we have seen an increase in random targeting of areas and increased arrests. This has coincided with an inner city urban renewal policy in Cape Town that has adopted a "zero tolerance" approach. A number of business and civic interests have recently been lobbying for the removal of "crime and grime" from the streets of Cape Town. A bylaw has been proposed for the promotion of a safe and secure urban environment. This proposal was punitive in nature and targeted the homeless, street traders and sex workers. SWEAT challenged the proposed by law with other organisations and this bylaw has been sent back to the committee for review. SWEAT is also investigating the possibility of bringing a legal challenge against the use of the loitering bylaw to arrest sex workers.

SWEAT has gathered statements about police actions in specific areas during the course of our outreach work in response to an increasing number of individual complaints. Once these statements were taken, the trends were summarised and we sent letters highlighting the kinds of complaints reported most often in an area to the specific police commissioners responsible for overseeing these areas.

We had a promising response from one of the police commissioners, indicating that they take our complaints seriously and that we should report specific incidents to them in future. We have committed to the ongoing monitoring of police mistreatment of sex workers in these areas to follow up on the letters. We also met with the Deputy Commissioner of police to inform him of the continuous cycle of arrests of sex workers to ask for his response to this. He has authorised an investigation into how police handle the arrests of sex workers.

We found that the letters to commissioners of police were a positive start to addressing the problem of police violence and one that we can build on. We also learned the importance of keeping accurate records and data around police harassment as these records show the overall picture of what is happening in a specific area. This strategy has at the very least begun to make police officials and possibly the Major of Cape Town aware of the problems with the police that sex workers experience almost daily. Sex workers increasingly operate further underground to avoid harassment and arrest, making it difficult to continuously monitor the situation.

In almost all the forums where we engage with sex workers working outdoors they tell us that harassment by the police is the greatest difficulty they experience. Even if law reform does take place and sex workers are working in a changed legal environment, local law enforcement will still be able to make use of municipal bylaws and regulations to arrest and harass sex workers. Sex worker groups, individual sex workers and others working to protect sex worker rights will have to find ways to respond to this effectively.

Submitted by:

• Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Task Force
  PO Box 373
  Woodstock 7913
  Capetown
  South Africa
  Tel: +27 21 448 7875
  Email: nicole.fick@sweat.org.za