‘Police harass sex workers’

At around 10am on a Monday morning in Johannesburg city centre Thandeka* stands waiting for clients. At the back of her mind are her two children at home in Soweto. Their school fees are outstanding and she has no money to fill their lunch box.

Thandeka is a sex worker but she has not been able to work much of late, she says, because the police are arresting and harassing sex workers day and night. She claims police officers regularly pepper-spray the women and bundle them into police vans to detain them at the police station.

During an incident in December police fired rubber bullets to disperse sex workers from Anderson and End Streets, Thandeka claims.

It is not just the arrests she complains about, but the violence that comes with it, violence which often extends to rape. She claims she has been raped by police officers more than once in her sex-worker career.

Thandeka believes that if police understood the plight of sex workers, they would behave differently. “I, for one, am a mother. There’s a lot that my children need and l have raised them through sex work as l have failed to find another job to date. If police were to put themselves in my shoes, it would lessen the stigma and violence they exhibit to us,” she says.

ALSO READ: ‘It’s an occupation’: Sex workers crossing fingers that their job will be decriminalised

She hopes that the spread of sensitisation training for police officers will help to quell the violence so many sex workers suffer.

A survey by the SA Medical Research Council, the Wits School of Public Health and other partners, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in December last year, found that violence against sex workers was frequent.

The survey, which questioned 3,005 sex workers in 12 sites across South Africa’s nine provinces, found that 14% of female sex workers had been raped by police officers. AIDSFonds research conducted in July 2018, among nearly 2,000 sex workers, found that 39% reported violence and 31% reported sexual violence by police officers. The research was conducted by sex workers who were trained to interview their peers.

NOW READ: Govt to hold consultative meetings on possible decriminalisation of sex work