Driving through Luipaardsvlei, motorists cannot help but take a second (and sometimes third) look at the sad faces and skimpy outfits of Krugersdorp’s sex workers, women of the night or prostitutes as the masses have labelled them so redundantly.
The questions arise – where do they come from? Where are their families? Are these girls that desperate for money?
The NEWS approached a source who knows the answers to these questions all too well after dedicating his time to fighting the sex worker and drug trade in Krugersdorp.
Knowing that he probably features high on the hit list of many drug lords and pimps, the NEWS chose to protect his identity.
Prostitution in South Africa has been illegal since the 1957 Sexual Offences Act (SOA) was promulgated, and purchasing sex was added as an offence in a 2007 amendment, yet Krugersdorp’s streets are ridden with sex workers.
The NEWS’ source explains how the web of destruction starts and why many women stick to the trade for many years.
Girl is recruited
According to the source Nigerian drug lords and pimps are at the top of the trade chain in Krugersdorp.
It starts with a Nigerian national promising an unemployed girl a job and a place to stay.
Owing to the country’s high unemployment rate, the girls get trapped while hoping for a better future.
He explains that as their ‘domestic workers’, Nigerian drug lords and pimps pay them a minimum wage.
Girl is introduced to sex
They soon are introduced to a social circle of drug-using friends where they feel accepted by using drugs themselves.
No longer a domestic worker and caught in the web of addiction, girls move to what is called a smoke room – “a place where men are entertained,” the source explains. The Nigerian will contact his customers (drug users) to have sex with the girl and receives payment.
The girl then is raped, with no knowledge that this was actually pre-planned, and she is left abandoned and rejected.
Girl is told that she was not raped
Wanting to report this to the SAPS, the girl is convinced that she was not raped.
She then is thrown out of her own room and placed with other girls.
For the first time she’s alone and starts to experience withdrawal symptoms, with no more freebies.
She will start doing anything for drugs. After a day or two, the Nigerian will give her a hit or two.
He tells her if she wants more, she needs to work the streets for money to buy her drugs.
He keeps book of all the transactions and now owns this girl.
Then the harsh reality of being trapped in the world of a sex worker sets in.
The sex worker
The sex worker will do sexual favours for anybody to make money to support her drug addiction.
In Krugersdorp sex workers will charge anything from R20 to R350, depending on the status of the car and person picking them up.
They steal anything visible in the vehicle, but mostly cellphones and wallets from men who use their services.
Over 98 per cent of these women admit that if men want sex without a condom they will still do it, and will ask extra.
All money made will go to the Nigerians to buy drugs and the vicious cycle will start again.
