‘Our work is about sitting on laps and touching’
Professions whose selling point is close physical contact are bound to have a tougher time than most when social distancing is the order of the day. Claire Keeton meets people struggling under the lockdown in the worlds of sex work and exotic dancing
Suzy tightens her hoodie against the biting wind and dust in a yard in Khayelitsha. She walked here on Wednesday hoping to collect a food parcel, but it wasn’t her turn. The lanky woman — who, along with the other sex workers and entertainers in this article, preferred not to use her real name — doesn’t get angry. She will come back next time the Sex Workers Education & Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) and sex worker movement Sisonke can do a drop. They delivered about two dozen parcels to
Langa on Tuesday, and Khayelitsha the next day.
Khayelitsha has the most Covid-19 infections in SA — 2,399 by Friday. Yet dozens of people in the streets around the main taxi rank and smoky braais this week did not wear masks. Neither did Suzy.
Risk is relative. For her, the dangers of practising sex work in her neighbourhood are a more immediate threat than an invisible virus.
“I’d rather stay at home and starve than find customers in the location. It is a huge risk and you don’t earn the money you would normally,” says the 38-year-old. Until lockdown, she worked most nights in the city and suburbs of Cape Town.
“Now I can’t work. We are relying on handouts, and friends look out for each other. Some people here know I do sex work, some don’t really know, and they think I have rich boyfriends.” Her voice rises as a chorus of dogs bark across the road.
Lloyd Rugara, the Western Cape co-ordinator for Sisonke, says they are supporting about 156 sex workers in greater Cape Town and the winelands, but can’t cover everyone.
The 100 parcels delivered so far include the basics common to famines and warzones: maize meal, cooking oil, sugar and flour. Tinned food, sanitary pads, soap, sanitiser and a mask complete the pack.
“We insist on people practising social distancing and hand hygiene and wearing masks,” he says. “Not everyone has masks, so we are giving them out.
“We give as we are given and cannot promise anything,” says Rugara, bouncing on his feet, wanting to get going. “It is the most difficult time for sex workers.”
Suzy says: “I thought I had the virus. I felt sick and went to the clinic where they took my temperature and sent me away.”
She took Med-Lemon and felt better.
“I have not seen any door-to-door testing or mass testing in Mandela Park. It would be better if they would come here.”
She says: “There’s nothing bad about it, being a sex worker.”
At least, it wasn’t bad before Covid-19 trapped her in Mandela Park, about 30km from her workplace. She usually earns enough to support herself, her mother, young daughter and son.
Transgender sex worker Gulam is better off than her Khayelitsha colleagues because she lives in Observatory, where meals are handed out at the village green every day, and she’s not far from the streets she would normally work.
But under lockdown her customers have disappeared, and her income has dropped to zero. Neither Gulam nor her partner of 17 years, also in sex work, think it is safe or profitable to pursue it now.
“Now’s the time for pimps and gangsters. You can be forced to do something against your will, or get a quarter price for a full-time job,” she says.
Tall with wide eyes, high cheekbones and a regal nose with a narrow scar, Gulam glides into the interview with a model’s grace.
Under lockdown police harassment has intensified, she says. They wanted to send her to the city’s temporary settlement for homeless people at Strandfontein, set up under the pandemic.
“They chased me around and have made me a prisoner in our house. Twice they have picked me up when I was getting groceries.
“One night they pushed me and Taylor into a van, swearing and yelling at us. They drove us around all night and it was a bumpy ride. They dropped us way out at Sunrise Beach and I had to walk back.”
In the SWEAT office, the helpline telephone is ringing. Programmes manager Nosipho Vidima says: “This afternoon I met a group of female sex workers complaining about police officers who told them to roll on the ground and do push-ups in the rain.”
They had just been evicted because they were unable to pay rent and the police confiscated their belongings and blankets, says Vidima.
“The pandemic would have been different for them if sex work had already been decriminalised.
“With the deployment of the police and military, sex workers have faced a lot of profiling and harassment,” says Vidima, listing Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town and Mpumalanga as areas affected by this.
Western Cape police spokesman, Colonel Andrè Traut, says they will take action against police members who perpetuate ill-treatment and brutality.
Sexual health therapist Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng says that the initial conversations she heard among sex workers about whether they could work given social distancing, and the potential of digital platforms, soon gave way to socioeconomic concerns.
“The pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on sex workers and further highlighted the inequalities and discrimination they experience,” she says. “No-one mentions the vulnerable groups and plans for them. They do feel left out.”
Religious groups have been generous, says Gulam, who attends the Old Apostolic Church. “Christian and Muslim groups have supported us and folded us in their prayers. Rather than fighting, they have really opened up to embrace sex workers. This is quite a surprise and I wonder what’ll happen after Covid-19.”
The restrictions regarding funerals cut Gulam and the trans sisterhood deep when they could not come together to remember their “loving sister Roxy” who died recently. Gulam says: “We don’t know if our sisters are alive or not.”
She misses visiting her brother and sister in Worcester and longs to see them again.
Once the lockdown is over, she hopes the sisterhood will celebrate with a fashion show that has been booked for the Castle’s rooftop in October.
Gulam, whose hobby is needlework, wants to design and sew a dress with Dutch designer Duran Lantink, who will host the event.
The “Sistaaz of the Castle” launched a glossy fashion magazine last year with him, displaying their joint creations, which have been exhibited on ramps overseas. They have conjured up glamour where there is little to be found.
For Savannah, who works at the Lollipop Lounge in Johannesburg, the hot lights onstage and the men in her thrall provide more excitement than she expected when she joined as an exotic dancer three years ago.
“I have always loved dancing. Even as a little girl I was dancing on tables,” says Savannah, her stage name. “But it takes courage to dance in front of a lot of men while being judged. Are your boobs big enough?
Are your legs strong enough?
“The first few weeks I did not know what I was doing, and it was scary, but now I love it,” says the sleek performer, who can pole dance in 20cm stilettoes.
The lockdown closed the club, where about 30 dancers work, getting much closer than 1.5m to their customers. As Savannah says: “Our work is all about the personal connection. It is about sitting on laps and touching. I don’t know if we can sit on a lap and the men can wear a mask, and we can wear a mask and dance?
“In our industry we always sanitise a lot!” adds Savannah, who has been staying in shape by exercising in front of the TV.
“Our bodies are our business.
“I love being an entertainer and meeting new people. I miss that,” says Savannah, comfortable in her tattooed skin.
Her real earnings come from tips. “I spent three hours with one client and he paid me R10,000 on one of my best nights,” she says.
But now she has nothing, and the Unemployment Insurance Fund is unlikely to give exotic dancers — or sex workers — relief.
Savannah says: “I had to look my partner in the eyes and ask her to help. She works in the car industry and is doing well. When I go back, it will be my turn.”
At 48, she says she is too old to have secrets. Her adult daughter and mother know where she works.
“I’m missing them a lot, especially on Mother’s Day.” She hopes lockdown restrictions will ease enough for her to visit them soon. As for work, she can only wait.
None of the women have worked since they shut their doors on March 17, says Lollipop Lounge owner Perle Crole, better known as Gigi, winner of Celebrity Survivor SA. She founded a craft distillery with her husband; it is also closed under lockdown.
Of the Lollipop Lounge, she says: “People come because of the personal connection, to get up close. They don’t go to a strip club for social distancing. We will be the last to go back to work.”
‘Christian and Muslim groups have supported us and folded us in their prayers … This is quite a surprise. I wonder what’ll happen after Covid-19’
‘Our work is about sitting on laps and touching. I don’t know if we can sit on a lap and the men can wear a mask, and we can wear a mask and dance?’