Post Conference Prayer Day 9

Find Your Voice. . .Break the Chain

Concerns Raised About Illegal Sex Trade

World Cup in South Africa heightens awareness about human trafficking
By John Barr and Nicole Noren

ESPN
Updated: June 7, 2010, 1:27 PM ET
  CAPE TOWN, South Africa
 

Editor's note: For more than nine months, "Outside the Lines" has investigated whether the presence of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa will have an effect on human trafficking in the country. OTL interviewed dozens of sources in South Africa and around the world, including officials in law enforcement, government agencies, research institutes and advocacy groups, as well as pimps and prostitutes who will work the brothels and streets of South African cities that are hosting World Cup matches. The investigation included undercover footage, recorded from within the South African sex industry in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The reporting process led to multiple sources who said more young people have been trafficked either into South Africa from other countries or internally to work in a rapidly growing sex industry because of the monthlong soccer tournament.

 

Through coercion or deception, and sometimes force, traffickers lure people into exploitative situations. A person does not have to cross a border into another country to be trafficked. In fact, in South Africa, internal trafficking is as much a problem as, if not more than, external trafficking. According to the U.S. State Department's most recent (2009) Trafficking in Persons report, "The government of South Africa does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, however, it is making significant efforts to do so."

 

There is no law against human trafficking in South Africa making it difficult for police to come against the practice.  Without hte legislation in place it makes it difficult for police to act and there are not enough recources in place make a lack of cohesion between agencies to work together.  People's hands are tied to work against human trafficking.  Police are doing what they can and even risking their own lives to rescue victims.  It is a new issue and there is not a lot of understanding about it and what to do about it.  Often they go into a house and blanket arrest anyone there including the victims.  The government is not doing its part.  The end game for victims is grim at best.  Even if agencies can get the victims off the streets, many return to the streets.

Tonya Stanfield, network director of Justice [ACTS], a Cape Town anti-trafficking group spoke with ESPN reporter John Barr outside a Cape Town warehouse, where police rescued five teenage trafficking victims in late April. Stanfield's organization distills the often murky practice of human trafficking down to four core elements. Trafficking victims, Stanfield said, are tricked, transported, trapped and traded. As South Africa awaits an estimated half-million soccer fans for the World Cup, there are increasing concerns that more people will become victims of human trafficking and that younger women and girls, in particular, will be at risk.

One-third of all workers in South Africa are unemployed and nearly 70 percent of South African children live in poverty, according to Patric Solomons, director of the Cape Town-based children's advocacy group Molo Songololo.  Solomons fears relaxed visa controls at South Africa's already porous borders, the decision by South African public school officials to give children vacation during the month-long soccer tournament starting Friday and the influx of hundreds of thousands of foreigners with deep pockets have created a perfect storm for sex trafficking.   Solomons pointed out that South Africa, unlike Germany, has a host of factors that make it uniquely susceptible to exploitation by human trafficking syndicates: a huge, impoverished lower class and, unlike more than half the world's countries, no law specifically criminalizing all forms of human trafficking.   Last month, South African President Jacob Zuma signed legislation that makes trafficking in minors a crime, but more comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation remains stuck in a committee within the South African Parliament and won't be passed into law until late 2010 at the earliest, according to Errol Naidoo, an activist and lobbyist who pushed hard to get the legislation passed before the World Cup started. "I think that most people are just appalled that government is not taking this seriously enough," Naidoo said in a recent interview near his Cape Town office, just outside the gates of Parliament. "Recently, they arrested nine Nigerian traffickers … and they don't have the law in place to effectively and comprehensively deal with these guys." An ordained minister who runs the conservative Family Policy Institute, Naidoo said sex traffickers see the World Cup as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to "cash in." "They are operating on the principle that there are many desperate young women in South Africa because of the high levels of unemployment, of poverty and desperation, so they are feeding off that and they know that they stand to make millions and millions of rand [South Africa's currency] over the period [of the World Cup]," Naidoo said.

In Johannesburg, where the World Cup begins Friday, the number of brothels has doubled within the past year, according to one law enforcement source. The source, who spoke to "Outside the Lines" in an extensive interview in early May, agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because of the undercover nature of his work. He explained that he has spent years penetrating human trafficking syndicates and that he had found 10 trafficking victims in Johannesburg-area brothels alone in just the two weeks before the interview. "In the last couple weeks, there has been an increase in domestic trafficking, and it has been for the World Cup," the source said. He went on to speak of a Cape Town organized-crime syndicate known as "The Firm," an umbrella organization made up of roughly 100 smaller criminal groups that collectively run the sex trade in Cape Town. The Firm, according to the source, recently expanded to include Chinese crime syndicates. "Cape Town is cut and dried into organized crime like you can't believe," he said.

Safe haven

In a safe house on the outskirts of Cape Town a rescued victim, Jasmine, recounted the story of her final months in the sex trade.   She said she almost left South Africa when one of the German pimps she worked for in Mossel Bay told her he wanted to take her to Austria. Convinced she simply would be sold again and might not survive if she agreed to go with him to Europe, she searched for a way out. "I knew I wanted to get away, but I didn't know what reason I could tell them," she said. When her daughter's father died in May 2009, she saw an opening. She told the German pimps she had to return to Cape Town to attend to family matters. "'If you want me to come back, you'll let me go now,'" she said she told them. She never went back.

But Jasmine was hardly free. Still hooked on drugs, including crack cocaine, and fearing the Germans would find her, she avoided brothels and escort agencies and instead worked the streets of Cape Town, living for months in a budget motel. Earlier this year, she said, she was beaten and gang-raped by a group of customers. She said the men drove her to an unfamiliar area and simply left her. With nowhere to go, she reached out to a safe house that takes in prostitutes and former gang members. She said she has since rediscovered her faith and hopes to be reunited with her daughter.  It was Jasmine's mother who told her about the safe house where Jasmine has been since earlier this year.

"I was desperate for change," she said from the safe house where she has lived since February. She's convinced that because of the World Cup, more women will be drawn into a life she only recently escaped."The men of South Africa are OK with their wives, their mothers, their daughters, their sisters … being sold," she said. "It's already sick enough that we are being exploited by our own men; now it's to get exploited by people from other countries."

Prayer Focus:    

Pray that God will send help to the victims in South Africa who have the legal knowledge and skills to work with the government to pass and enforce laws against human trafficking.  Pray that the economy in South Africa will improve so that people are not so desperate that they are willing to allow their women to be victimized in this way for "rand" (South African's currency).  Pray that more safe haven shelters will be established during this World Cup to offer a place of safety to sex trade women and children.  Cry out to God on behalf of these teenagers who have no hope and feel as if no one cares for them.  Ask God to send them someone who cares, someone to be His hands, His feet and whose heart is broken for the things that break the heart of God.  Pray for the salvation of the pimps, the johns, the prostituted women and children.  Praise God for the workers who are there offering safe haven for these victims.  Ask God to provide for them, to protect them, and to encourage them as they face a seemingly overwhelming situation.  Praise God for what He will do in the midst of unbelievable evil knowing God's promise in Romans 5:20 that where sin abounds, grace does much more abound.  Praise and worship God as you pray, knowing that He rules and reigns despite this evil in our world.  Praise Him that one day there will be no more sorrow, no more tears and no more human trafficking.  That ultimately, the light will overcome the darkness because "The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness and the darkness couldn't put it out (The Message).