South Africa October 2006 |
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| The Slide From Poverty Into the Sex Trade, (Business Day, 2006-10-28):-Two men walk determinedly towards the improvised minibus taxi rank on the Mpumalanga side of the Ressano Garcia border post with Mozambique. One dangles a faded canvas bag leisurely over his shoulder. The other mumbles something in Portuguese and points a finger in the direction of the taxis, his unoccupied arm swinging purposefully as if to remind the two women in tow carrying heavy bags that being a man extricates him from such burdensome preoccupations. The women are wearing knee-length mcheka-print skirts, their heads covered in colourful scarves, and it would not be melodramatic to confuse the beads of perspiration on their faces with tears. One of the men rubs his hands together and says, pleading, "Joni!" to the taxi drivers sitting in the shade of a mango tree. Joni is Tsonga for Johannesburg. The announcement elicits no response from the taxi drivers, who ignore him. The two women don't have to be Lisbon-educated economists to discern which side the demand-supply scale tilts. They are at the tail end of a daily stampede of Mozambican job-seekers who cross the border, legally or illegally, searching for cheap transport to Joburg. Their husbands' caveman instincts aside, their papers are in order and they know and seem to trust the men who have taken them across the border to an unknown land. They are safe from becoming another statistic: an estimated 600000-800000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders each year, 80% of whom, according to this year's Trafficking in Persons: United States Agency for International Development Response report, are women and girls, and up to 50% minors. Mozambique is a source country for those recruited with promises of lucrative jobs in SA and then sold to brothels, businesses and farms. Weekend Review recently gave substance to these shocking statistics. An investigation uncovered a human-trafficking syndicate operating from Komatipoort, a few kilometres from the Mozambique-SA border. The team recorded conversations with two self-confessed human traffickers, one a Mozambican called Moses, the leader, and the other a prostitute called Nompie. Their places of residence are known to Weekend Review. They rent rooms in Komatipoort in a building adjoining Polly's bar, a brothel. Former United Nations Children's Fund child rights project officer Viktoria Perschler-Desai, in a paper called Childhood on the Market, notes: "The owners of various discos and bars use child prostitutes to attract customers. Some places also rent out rooms." A visit to the brothel on a Friday evening lays bare the ease with which anyone can arrange to buy a Mozambican woman or girl child for R350, the price of a "fong kong" pair of Diesel jeans at a Bree Street shop in Joburg. On our arrival at the brothel, Given, a former street kid and now a volunteer at the Amazing Grace non-governmental organisation in Malelane, whispers discreetly in Nompie's ear that businessmen from Joburg want to talk to her about securing "amashambula" (a colloquialism for a beautiful woman) from Maputo to work at a tavern in Yeoville. Nompie, who claims sheis 16 but looks older than 25, is accompanied by five or six other girls barely out of their teens. Though hardly in the league of mirror-hogging Rivonia and Oxford Road prostitutes, Nompie's girls are well liked by the soldiers and cops who patronise this liquor and sex-trade hellhole, judging by the frequency with which they take turns disappearing under the canopy of a white bakkie parked outside the brothel. They do not stay long, R40 guaranteeing only one round. After a lengthy name-dropping discourse elevating to deity status the unsavoury underworld low-lifes who loaf at the Green House tavern on Raymond Street, Yeoville, where she once sold her young body for R30, Nompie agrees to talk to us. Once outside, she talks candidly about how easy it is to get a Mozambican girl to accompany one to Johannesburg, so long as one is prepared to pay R350 to a mareyana, a smuggler, and R50 to border post officials. She agrees to meet the next morning. We find her at 11am at another sex-trade den, Win Wong's, further up the street from Polly's. She takes us to Moses, who sits flopped on a creaky revolving chair on the porch, surrounded by three girls playing a card game. Moses, who has found easy pickings trafficking fellow Mozambicans, could pass for anyone: from the peasants he sells to strangers for pieces of silver, to a traumatised former prisoner who takes out his anger on women and children by selling them. He sizes us up and, satisfied that the latest vehicle model and Gauteng registration plate put us on the same pedestal of slack virtues as Mbuzini human trafficker John Nkuna, he dispenses with the proverbial war stories peculiar to underworld figures. Nkuna is no gushing fan of investigative journalism, and less so of the Sunday Times, which exposed him several years ago. In the absence of taxi routes to fight over and bullets to dodge, he has established himself as a central figure in the trafficking of human beings from Mozambique to SA, his substantial taxi fleet making him an integral cog in this sordid business. Nkuna supplies cheap labour to farms and businesses, a speciality that necessitates that he use illegal passings on the Mbuzini section of the border fence, not far from Komatipoort, past the Samora Machel memorial, to traffic as many people as possible without raising suspicion. The sweltering evening finds us huddled together inside the car, about 20m from the Ressano Garcia border post. "Samora Machel must be turning in his grave," says a Weekend Review team member, falling short of saying Nkuna and his ilk spit on the liberation hero's memory by using as a transit route land where his memorial is being built. How ironic that his widow, Graça Machel, is a patron of the Southern Africa Campaign Against Child Abuse and Trafficking. Moses is about to demonstrate just how easy it is to cross the Mozambique-SA border using only an ID and bribing corrupt officials. This is the least of law-enforcement officials' problems. His destination is the Ressano Garcia village on the Mozambican side, where he will recruit five girls to work as prostitutes at a brothel in an inner-city slum. At the hotel earlier, he shoots down Nompie's idea of crossing to SA through a hole in the Mbuzini border fence, seemingly dreading the prospects of interception. Defence force members "abetwa mshini", he says, meaning they are incorruptible. "I'll go in on foot through the border post," he says. "Going in is not a problem. It's very simple; I'll just go straight to border post officials and tell them we don't have passports and we're going to Ressano Garcia to visit someone, we're coming back tonight. "When I get that side, I'll convince the girls and call you to say I've found them. But we have to give the police R50. It's up to you how big the girls should be. Any age you want I can get you. I know girls we can recruit. "When I get there, my guys are always there to get nice girls to work in Johannesburg; trustworthy girls who won't steal money and run away." Nompie says "all we tell them is that everything is paid for, including border police and the mareyana, and they'll comply. All they have to know is there are jobs for them in Johannesburg." Ideas are thrown around as to how to get the girls transported to Johannesburg. Hiring a mini-bus taxi is ruled out, with Moses citing roadblocks. "Taking them back past the border police won't be a problem. I'll figure out a plan. We can use the railway line and hide inside a goods train," he says, "but we have to get there before 8pm, as the border post closes at 10pm." All happens as discussed during our meetings at Polly's and at the hotel room. It's about 6.30pm and Moses walks straight to the departure section of the border post, a South African ID with a crisp R50 note inside it his only "passport" to Mozambique. A third meeting will take place on a date to be arranged through Given, who knows Nompie from their days as street children before she graduated to prostitution and robbing clients of cellphones on Mpumalanga's deserted roads. She called this week to say she had found a 15-year-old Mozambican girl who would work at the tavern in Yeoville. "Four other girls are waiting in Maputo," she said. Given this week reported back to Vusi Ndukuya, Amazing Grace's officer for fighting child trafficking and the only man who readily divulges his surname in this unravelling mystery of a one-street frontier town with outlaws called Moses and juvenile madams called Nompie. Ndukuya has alerted the Komatipoort police, who are investigating the incident. Constable Michael Ngomane says that they will first rescue the 15-year-old to gather evidence and make an arrest. Given's domestic life may not be a Brady Bunch scenario, but at least he does not have a prison record and has never had to resort to selling human beings. Early interventions saved him from such a life. With the stipend he earns from volunteer work at Amazing Grace, he has built himself a brick house in one of the townships in Malelane, where he lives with his girlfriend. Given is not the only success story. Nine-year-old Rosa was stolen from her mother in Mozambique and taken across the border to SA, where she was rescued by social workers and brought to Amazing Grace. Carlos, 12, was abandoned by his grandmother in Beira, and had to work at a car wash in Maputo, where a stranger abducted him but lost him when they were chased by police at the border. The police involved have been sensitised to the dangers of exposing trafficked people to abductors in their countries of origin, with a line being drawn between illegal migration and trafficking. They were not repatriated but were taken to Amazing Grace. Both attend school and enjoy a normal life. Driving past Kanyamazane, on the way back to Johannesburg, the melancholy voice of Tina Turner, once an alleged victim of forced labour by her ex-husband, talent scout/guitarist Ike Turner, bellows out "but you try and you wanna be free", from one of her '70s hits. The mystery finally unravels. Commercial sexual exploitation and forced labour are not only in Hillbrow and on farms. They are everywhere. Look around you. | |
South African Migration Project (SAMP) - Queen's University - http://www.queensu.ca/samp |