Special Report – Human Trafficking In The Spotlight
The Reality We’re Not Talking About Enough
Anyone can be a human trafficking victim. It’s a scary thought. What’s scarier is that a trafficker may be someone you know and trust. Some have become as bold as to abduct victims from toilets of popular malls, as people have warned and revealed on Twitter.
Technology, the Internet and the dominance of social media have also assisted in creating a well-connected, transnational network that enables the advancement of human trafficking, and make it easy to be trafficked.
Increasing internal reports of this all too real phenomenon reveal it to be a complex, invisible crime that happens in plain sight. To be aware of human trafficking is to fully grasp what it entails.
WHAT IS HUMAN TRAFFICKING?
It involves the recruitment, transportation, sale, leasing or harbouring of people by means of force, deceit, the abuse of vulnerability and the abuse of power for exploitation. This is all stipulated in South Africa’s human trafficking legislation: the Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Act of 2013.
In South Africa, people are trafficked for sexual slavery (sex trafficking), child labour, child marriages (ukuthwala); domestic servitude, organ smuggling, illegal child adoptions, debt bondage, forced surrogacy and the use of body parts for imithi (cultural medicines).
It’s important to define the problem accurately in order to educate effectively, says police practice researcher at Unisa, Marcel van der Watt. “If not, everything we see, or hear, will become trafficking. And not every child or person that goes missing is trafficked,” he points out.
“The Act – which is an excellent piece of legislation – is comprehensive and makes allowance for many other forms of exploitation. This lends itself to the contentions around the complex issue of sex work and prostitution and how its intersection with human trafficking is interpreted. Many of the arguments that are made for legalising the sex trade ignore the part of the definition of human trafficking that refers to the abuse or exploitation of vulnerability,” Van Der Watt says.
Sex trafficking survivor and activist, Grizelda Grootboom, who has become a recognisable voice and face for anti-sex trafficking locally, is against the legalisation of sex work.
In her harrowing book, Exit, she documents how she was thrust into the underworld of sex trafficking, drugs and prostitution when she was recruited by a trusted female friend with the promise of a job in Joburg.
“Sex trafficking is a big profit industry that can be traced all the way back to 1810 with Saartjie Baartman. A woman’s body for a trafficker can be worth R20 000 – just one woman. Some of the traffickers who are sentenced are allowed to continue the business from jail because some of these businesses are owned by senior level officials,” Grootboom says.
She adds: “Pimps, traffickers and people who’ve been practising sex slavery for years are trying to turn terminologies around so they can keep on doing the business. Ask a woman on the streets if she wants to be there, and she’ll tell you she doesn’t.”
Sex trafficking may be the most documented form of human trafficking in the country, but the Global Labour Index puts SA’s slave labour figures higher than our sex trafficking figures.
WHY SOUTH AFRICA IS A HOTSPOT
Human trafficking is said to be a R257 billion industry, according to global statistics by World Hope International, Unicef and the US Department of State. At least 1-2 million people are trafficked every year, most victims are girls aged five to 15. Of the 1.2 million children trafficked annually, half are African.
According to Richard Ots from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), South Africa is a country of origin, transit and destination for trafficking.
“This means victims are recruited from here and taken to other parts of the world (origin); victims are transitted through South Africa to reach other countries like Europe, Asia and America (transit), and victims from other parts of the world are brought to SA to be exploited here ( destination). Trafficking also happens within South Africa, between provinces, or also within a province or a neighbourhood,” he says.
Extreme poverty, lack of education, unemployment and the search for greener pastures are some of the dire conditions traffickers take advantage of to lure victims into their grip and control. South Africa, with its divisive history and structural inequalities, plays into this, making it an enabling environment
and a fertile ground for human trafficking.
Van Der Watt strongly believes the demand for cheap labour also plays a huge role.
“We have to address the demand for cheap labour and sex in our country. The low wages we pay our workers, plus unemployment rates, open up the floodgates for vulnerabilities to be exploited,” he says.
CHALLENGES TO PREVENTION
South Africa is guided by the UN’s Parlemo Protocol signed by countries globally to develop legislation, protect victims, prosecute perpetrators and prevent human trafficking. Every year countries are rated on a three-tier system in accordance.
The US Department of State Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report downgraded South Africa to a tier-2 watch list as a result of the country’s failure to meet the minimum requirements for combatting human trafficking, specifically government’s failure, for the second year, to secure enough funding for anti-trafficking efforts. Corruption and a lack of financial investment by the government to curb human trafficking were the main reason for the downgrade.
Trafficking syndicates use corruption to their advantage and operate with impunity, making conviction and prosecution difficult.
“A lot of these cases aren’t investigated properly because of lack of resources and the complexity of these investigations – they often go beyond jurisdiction, provinces and borders, which makes it difficult. The cases are laborious and time-consuming. The people who perpetrate these crimes
It also doesn’t help that anyone can be a trafficker – a neighbour, pastor, friend, sibling or partner.
are very much familiar with the constraints that government and law enforcement have,” Van Der Watt says.
Ots says SA currently has a lot of arrests and convictions – there are cases where traffickers have been put away for life. “But, syndicates are hardly caught. Human trafficking is a hard crime to identify, prosecute and investigate because it’s transnational and organised. You can have the brains behind the crimes sitting in a foreign country and the exploitation that’s taking place is by syndicates operating on different continents,” he says.
He continues: “It’s also an invisible crime. You could be speaking to someone and not realise they could be a victim of trafficking – in a factory, restaurant, mines, or a night club. And when it comes to children, you see a child with an adult, you don’t question it. It also doesn’t help that anyone can be a trafficker – a neighbour, pastor, friend, sibling or partner. One can get recruited via social media, or through recruitment agencies.”
Van Der Watt, who has also provided expert court testimony in a number of cases, points out that a lot of the victims themselves don’t fully understand that what’s happening to them is human trafficking and therefore they don’t self-identify.
“The traffickers are manipulators. And in some cases, part of the victimhood and exploitation is the commission of other crimes – fraud, robbery, prostitution. So sometimes victims don’t want to disclose out of fear of being prosecuted,” he explains.
SA’s reputation for corruption is also linked to its “open borders” making entry in and out of the country easy. The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) has been criticised for this. Its recent relaxation on travel restrictions for minors is seen to open doors to trafficking. In response, DHA spokesperson Thabo Mogola says, “South African minors will still be required to produce unabridged birth certificates and prove parental consent when leaving the country. Home Affairs is simplifying the rules on travelling with minors who are foreign nationals to minimise disruption to legitimate travellers without compromising the safety of minors and the rights of their parents. Rather than denying entry where documentation is absent, travellers will be given an opportunity to prove parental consent.”
VICTIMS ARE LEFT ALONE
Grootboom says she was rejected by a lot of women during her survival journey. “Nurses turned us away, and social workers were not equipped to work with us. My traffickers knew and used it to their advantage,” she shares.
Explaining what happens to trafficked victims once they’re rescued, Major Margaret Stafford of the Salvation Army says, “We have Thuthuzela centres, in many of the bigger hospitals around the country, offering medical help with the presence of SAPS officials and social workers. We also have a few one-stop centres around the country, like Ikhaya Le Themba in Johannesburg, which operates as a shelter.” She says most of the centres combine human trafficking victims with their domestic violence shelters. “Most social workers work with domestic violence victims. This means trafficked victims don’t get the specialised care they need. Training is being held around the country to equip social workers, but we’ve a long way to go,” Stafford adds.
KNOW THE WARNING SIGNS:
An attractive job is offered to you far from home with no qualifications required, free housing and transport and the free processing of your visa and/or work permit. A friend or relative offers to send you to an expensive school far from home and offers to pay your school fees. Illegal travel documents are given to you.
A recruitment agent tells you a visitor’s or tourist visa is good enough for working purposes.
Someone on social media wants to meet face to face (to offer you work or a free holiday or an academic scholarship.)