Avoid human traffickers’ gambits

TZANEEN – Corinne Sandenbergh from STOP Trafficking Of People has been giving awareness talks at Merensky and Ben Vorster high schools in Tzaneen as well as King’s Court in Modjadjiskloof.

The learners are taught how to avoid pitfalls and how to browse the job sections of job vacancy websites. Many of these internet sites often post receptionist vacancies offering inflated starting salaries (R16 000 a month).

According to Sandenbergh, this is usually an enticement into the sex industry and the successful applicants start working in the sex industry three weeks into their new “job”.

Sandenbergh, who recently moved to Haenertsburg with her husband, says the All Africa Human Trafficking conference will be held in Livingstone, Zambia, in September. Meanwhile she is part of the Tzaneen Community Forum, an established non-government organisation and will be holding meetings with the Greater Tzaneen Municipality shortly to find a suitable building to start a safe house. Dave Protter from the Crisis Centre in Boundary Road in Tzaneen currently runs a 48-hour safe house in a quiet street in suburban Tzaneen.

This new safe house will be able to accomodate people for longer periods of time, stretching into six to nine months. It will house victims of family abuse and violence as well as prostitutes who wish to leave the business.

Workers at the safe house will teach the victims life skills so that they can go out and start new lives. They will also get counselling and spiritual guidance.

Sandenbergh says there are a number of prostitutes in the Tzaneen area, mainly on the Agatha road. These prostitutes have little children and no education. She recently took food to the women and they were very grateful.

STOP Trafficking Of People consists of two people in Tzaneen, three in Polokwane, and their head office is in Cape Town. The Sex Workers Union tried to legalise prostitution before the World Cup Soccer in 2010 as it wanted to bring out 100 000 girls from China, Russia and Thailand as exotic dancers and masseurs. The union was unsuccessful.

Germany decriminalised prostitution for their World Cup Soccer in 2003. The prostitutes remained in Germany and many now operate from caravans parked off the main roads in the forests. A green light within the caravan denotes availability whereas the red light denotes occupation. Sandenbergh says that if prostitution is legalised there will be no control over human trafficking.

The Traffic In Person’s Bill, known as the TIP Bill, has been signed by the president. It will still take another year to be passed into law. The fine for a human trafficker will then be R100 million and jail for life. The trafficker’s assets will be sold for the woman or girl’s suffering and to get her back home.

According to Sandenbergh, Bloemfontein is a central hotspot. The human trafficking route from North Africa winds its way down through Tzaneen and then further. Sandenbergh says learners have been warned not to hitchhike and have been made aware of the dangers.

Tammy Twaibu (18) from Haenertsburg hitchhiked on the R71 after work on August 9 2012. Despite an extensive land and air search as well as a R10 000 reward being offered for information leading to her whereabouts, she has never been found again.

Sandenbergh is a social worker by profession. She studied at Stellenbosch University and went on to obtain her Honours degree as a medical social worker.

She went into politics and became mayoress of Stellenbosch in 2006. She started a safe house in Stellenbosch in 2008 where trauma counselling and intensive healing was part of the therapy for broken women. Herkie, her husband, is a gynaecologist. She came to the village as Herkie, now retired, has taken on a year’s contract and trains doctors and nurses to handle emergencies in rural areas.

STOP Trafficking Of people is involved in stopping the sexual exploitation of women and children, muti killings, illegal organ harvesting, slave labour, child labour, child soldiers and arranged marriages. The latter is called ukutwala and it is the process whereby old men abduct 14-16 year olds and “marry” them according to traditional customs.