‘Porn fuels market for trafficking’

PEOPLE need to realise that indulging in pornography and commercial sex fuels the market for human trafficking and the cycle of abuse.

This is according to ex-Hawks investigator Marcel van der Watt, who is now a Unisa academic specialising in the study of human trafficking.

“People using these services care little whether they involve victims of trafficking,” he said ahead of today’s sixth annual Stop Human Trafficking Walk for Freedom, organised by Durban’s Umgeni Community Empowerment Centre, where he is scheduled to be a speaker.

“Once they are in there, they are using the services.” He called it “an inconvenient truth” that needed to be discussed. He said the first step towards ending human trafficking in South Africa would be to curb the demand for commercial sex and cheap labour.

“Simply put, if consumers didn’t buy, third parties, pimps and traffickers couldn’t sell”

He said the problem was systemic and that the 2 132 cases reported from August 2015 to December 2017 were “the tip of the tip of an iceberg”.

“When I have consulted with victims who have been rescued I hear in the consultations that over one to five years the victims have been swopped, traded and moved between multiple addresses and traffickers.”

Van der Watt said while inequality in South Africa made the country ripe for such activity, it was corruption rather than poverty that was the stronger predictor. He said corruption and official complicity in cases were a pervasive theme that emerged from the lived experiences of participants in his doctoral research.

“Kerbside conversations throughout the country over six years, field journalling and in-depth interviews with 120 people active in every aspect of combating human trafficking – including brothel owners and convicted traffickers – formed part of the study.”

He said the research hsd allowed him to glean insights that are frequently absent from theoretical discussions of trafficking and corruption.

He said there was a clear disincentive for some victims and witnesses to disclose ordeals and share information.

“Some victims who flee places of exploitation and seek assistance from the SAPS are bundled into police vehicles and taken back to their traffickers.

“A Hawks investigator revealed ‘a lot of embassies are also involved’ and pointed out that some victims of trafficking ‘are also scared of their own embassies in their countries’.”

Van der Watt said traffickers and sexual predators used porn as a means to groom, lower inhibitions of victims and to perpetrate abuse and rape.

“Once subjugated, victims are frequently used as ‘actors’ in amateur and professional pornography and so a vicious cycle continues.”