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Factbook on Global Sexual
Exploitation
South Africa
Trafficking
Thai police are looking for an ethnic Chinese man and
his accomplices who lured local women to South Africa and forced them into sex slavery. A
police spokesman told Reuters at least seven Thai women had complained they had been
offered jobs in South Africa as dancers or hostesses in night clubs but when they arrived
found they were required to serve as unpaid prostituted women. The women said they were
tricked into paying the gang a "commission" for their tickets, work permits and
employment before they left Thailand. In South Africa they were forced to work day and
night, they said. "Some of them have already returned home and some are in the
process of repatriation," said the police spokesman. He said the operation appeared
to be part of a well-organized business sending Thai women and girls to Africa but did not
say how the women had managed to escape. ("Thai women lured to South Africa as sex
slaves," Reuters, 24 August 1998)
Prostitution
South Africa is a transit zone for
international child pornography and prostitution. (Merab Kirmire, End Child Prostitution,
Pornography and Trafficking (ECPAT), August 7, 1998, Sapa African National Congress)
Case
In 1996, police arrested a mentally ill man, responsible for the deaths of 17
prostitutes who were found strangled in the Western Cape Peninsula. (AFP, 5
December 1997)
Pornography
Policy and Law
In April 1998, the South African Human Rights Commission said it would ask
Parliament to prioritize the amendment of a law to prevent the easy circulation of child
pornography on the Internet. ("Child Pornography on Internet Should be Amended,"
Sapa, 30 April 1998)
South Africa has appointed a task team to protect children against pornography and to
develop legislation that will place the country on a par with the international
community." (Sisula Outlines Latest Child Pornography Legislation," 7 July 1998)
New legislation is in effect in South Africa making importation, production, possession
and distribution of child pornography on the Internet an offense. ("Law to Control
Child Porn in Force from Monday," Sapa, 31 May 1998)
The 1996 Films and Publications Act makes the importation, production, possession and
distribution of child pornography an offence. (Sisula Outlines Latest Child Pornography
Legislation," 7 July 1998)
Organized and Institutionalized Sexual Exploitation
and Violence
The number
of violent crimes against women and children has risen dramatically since the ANC came
into power in 1994, says National Party. The number of rapes in South Africa had increased
by 23% since 1996.
- In 1994, 42,429 rape cases were reported, while 52,160 cases were
reported in 1997.
- There were 105.3 rapes per 100,000 people in 1994, by 1997, the
figure was 120.6 per 100,000.
- In 1994, 3,874 cases of indecent assault were reported, in 1997,
the figure rose to 5,053.
The report only provided the
figures of reported cases. The introduction to the "National Policy Guidelines for
Victims of Sexual Offences" said less than one third of reported rape cases reached
the courts. Only 16% of reported rape cases resulted in convictions. ("More Rapes
‘Since ANC came to power’", HURINet - The Human Rights Information Network)
During the
first three months of 1998, 5,214 South African girls under 18 were reported raped,
keeping pace with 1997’s record of 21,404. (Dean E. Murphy, "Africa’s
Silent Shame," Los Angeles Times, 16 August 1998)
Health officials in South Africa say adolescent girls are twice
as likely to become infected with HIV as boys, a reflection of increased sexual activity,
often unwilling, with older men. Mamelato Leopeng, an AIDS counselor at the Esselen Street
Health Center in Johannesburg, said about one-third of the HIV-infected men she encounters
have bought into the belief that sex with a virgin will cure them, and they are further
convinced that the needed "dose of purity" is rendered ineffective with a
condom. (Dean E. Murphy, "Africa’s Silent Shame," Los Angeles Times,
16 August 1998)
The desire to "get back at women" is the most common
reaction among men when they are first told they are HIV-positive, says Mamelato Leopeng,
an AIDS counselor at the Esselen Street Health Center in Johannesburg, says. HIV-infected
men have even targeted young girls as an act of vengeance. In a case reported by South
African police in May 1998, members of a gang of unemployed men in Soweto were allegedly
raping schoolgirls, telling their victims that they were HIV-infected and didn't want to
die alone. (Dean E. Murphy, "Africa’s Silent Shame," Los Angeles Times,
16 August 1998)
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Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation
Donna M. Hughes, Laura Joy Sporcic, Nadine Z. Mendelsohn and Vanessa Chirgwin
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