They say that they are fed up with the house owner, Naseem Latib, taking advantage of them and acting like their pimp.

Cardboard dividers, similar to the ones seen at the brothel in Klip Street, are the only protection sleeping sex workers have against a steady flow of men entering the house for sex.

“When you don’t want to wake up, they kick in the walls. You have no choice, you have to wake up,” one of the women told journalists.

Two rooms in the front of the house are used as sleeping quarters for the girls. A double bed base is used to cover up part of the collapsing cardboard wall when the girls try to sleep.

A shady room at the back, decorated with two sunflower stickers and a small mirror against the wall, is used to service clients. The bed has seen better days. A shattered piece of an old door is used to support the base of the double bed, which itself is on the verge of collapse.

Packets of condoms lie scattered throughout the house. Hundreds of green beer quarts are stacked against an outside wall in the yard.

Sex workers say that Mrs Latib encourages them to steal from their clients if they don’t pay them enough, on the condition that she receives a percentage thereof. Numerous girls also told journalists on the scene that she introduced them to drugs as a way of controlling them.

“Then she comes here in her cheap high heels, walking like a madam. She is no better than us. She might as well come stand on the street with us.”

A Zimbabwean national, who they claim are in the country illegally, cooks for the girls and receives the daily R150 each sex worker must pay. The woman also used to sell liquor from the premises, something the girls say have stopped since information was received that authorities are planning another raid.

The women say that it will be better if the house closes down. As the journalists walk away from the brothel, sex workers chant “Close it down! Close it down! Fofo must come and close it down!”

Mrs Latib did not answer her phone or reply to messages asking her for comment.

After the article appeared in the Middelburg Observer, she contacted the journalist on Whatsapp, flatly denying the allegations against her and saying that “ a white gentleman by the name of Pedro” rented the house from her and that she got the house back when he did not pay rent recently.

“I was forced to deal with these girls. Because I wanted them out, they were trying to teach me a lessson,” she wrote.