Sex for sale in suburbs — woman fights the sites
● Danette Warburton, who lives in Germiston, knows she can’t eradicate prostitution in South Africa, so she is setting her sights on more accessible goals.
She is targeting websites promoting prostitution on the streets of her suburb of Primrose on the East Rand. Her next goal is adverts on YouTube that show where to find prostitutes in the suburb.
Her first target was streetprostitues.co.za, which advertised services in a street in her suburb. The site was shut down last year.
Her next target was the website pussy.joburg.
This website offered tips for men on where to find the “cheapest and easiest street walkers” with specific addresses to find ladies of the night on street corners in the Johannesburg CBD, Primrose, Krugersdorp, Hillbrow and Rosebank.
The account was taken down this week after the Sunday Times approached the company that hosted the site, Go Red Robot, with questions about pussy.joburg.
The site suggested the “common price of R50” and praised the “cost of cheap sex” in Johannesburg.
The administrators also went to great lengths to keep potential clients informed, and even sounded words of caution.
“Krugersdorp is highly under rated and almost completely unknown among the pussy riding fraternity in South Africa which explains the absurdity of **** prices, starting from R30 (less than $3 US) . . . You will not be **** the first team chearleaders but rather the naughty crack addicts that dropped out of school.”
It went on to share tips on how to catch a blesser who “takes care of” younger women, and explained etiquette for a date at a restaurant. “[If] you are not sure what to One of the websites promoting prostitution (since taken down) offered “sugar babes” advice on how to please their “blessers”. Under the heading “What to order at a restaurant“it included tips such as: “Show your sugar daddy that he can take you out without feeling embarrassed. Do it right and he will take you to more places. Act like a retard and he will not. You may be starving and think that ordering the super combo with chicken, steak, boerewors and fish is a good idea, after all, you can get a takeaway and eat it later, right? No. Does not work that way. Be reasonable. Don’t order chicken because you will have to smear it all over your face. Avoid sushi unless you are wearing black, soy sauce will mess and you will get it on your top. Do not overorder because it makes you look like a greedy guts. You are trying to convince your daddy that you are sophisticated, not that you are desperate. Zulus and all good meateating folk do not eat bottom feeders like prawns or oysters, so avoid those. If you have never eaten sushi before then ask for vegetarian sushi so that you don’t get stuck with raw fish on your plate that makes you want to throw up.” order, just ask your sugar daddy what he is ordering, then pick something similar. Remember the condoms!”
Advertising sex services online is illegal, said Dominic Cull of the Internet Service Providers Association. If complaints were made and the site was hosted from within South Africa, the internet provider would remove it, he said.
Verlie Oosthuizen, an attorney at Shepstone & Wylie, said these sites were technically illegal because prostitution was still a criminal act.
“Internet service providers do not have an obligation to monitor for unlawful/illegal content as this would be impractical.
“However, if unlawful activity on a website is brought to their attention they must take the content down or lose their legislative immunity in terms of section 73 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act,” said Oosthuizen.
She said it would be hard to charge the creators of such sites as it was not clear if they were profiting from it. This created a legal loophole to create sites advertising sex services.
Peter Rolfe, who registered the domain name pussy.joburg (he is not the content provider), said he did not think it was illegal to register names of sites that were later used to promote prostitution.
Rolfe said he searched the website www.alexa.com (which ranks websites) to see how popular the site was. It was ranked 49 131 in South Africa.
“The well-advertised www.redvelvet.co.za is ranked 828 in South Africa,” he said.
Cull said if anything online was illegal or infringed constitutional rights, and was hosted in South Africa, it could be taken down without the need for expensive lawyers or the courts.