Cape Town - Sex trafficking continues to make up most reported cases and prosecutions of Trafficking in Persons (TIP), while labour trafficking prosecutions remains lacking.
This is according to a recent report titled, “Research into the nature and scope of Trafficking in Persons in South Africa: prevalence, insights from the criminal justice system and relevant reporting mechanisms”.
The report was a collaboration between Purdue University in the US, the School of Human and Community Development at the University of the Witwatersrand, and Khulisa Management Services, supported by the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) and the US Agency for International Development (USAid).
Data sources included a quantitative analysis of media reports, SAPS statistics for 2007- 2021, and human trafficking prosecutions in South African courts in 2021, among others.
“The prominence of consumer-level demand for commercial sex was evident in potentially thousands of sex buyers who ‘used the services’ of adult and child victims of sex trafficking.
“Despite adequate laws to address this dimension of TIP in South Africa, sex buyers continue to exploit women and children with impunity.
Several adult websites, some advertised on public roadways, are repeatedly implicated in ongoing and successful sex trafficking prosecutions, yet none have been prosecuted.
“Extreme violence are meted out by traffickers while places where exploitation occurs are embedded in communities and operate for protracted periods without any meaningful law enforcement intervention,” researchers found.
In summary, the report found: “For the period January 1, 2006 to August 8, 2015, at least 257 TIP cases were reported to the SAPS ; and from August 9, 2015 to January 17, 2022, at least 10 820 TIP cases were reported to the SAPS under the Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Act.”
Adult victims were documented in 7 140 of these cases; child victims in 1 463 cases; and the age of victims was “unknown” in 2 217 cases.
In one case cited in the report, the court observed that “traffickers could be family members, parents, partners, friends, acquaintances, pimps, business contacts or strangers”.
In another, the court said “a feature of this case is that the abuse of these young complainants was the result of an elaborate and organised criminal enterprise”.
Some of the investigative challenges in human trafficking included large geographical areas of investigation, intimidation of victims and witnesses, complex relationships between victims and perpetrators, drug dependency of victims and witnesses, corruption, judicial proceedings and institutional bureaucracies.
Molo Songololo director Patric Solomons said: “Identifying this is complex, ... a lot of people are involved and the way people have been socialised to turn a blind eye.
Some groom and target people, and those who hold people captive operate in a syndicate and gang. A lot of intimidation goes on, threatening victims, families.
“We do work in Atlantis, Delft, Beaufort West, and try to review cases with elements of sexual exploitation that often don’t get identified as that.”
From the time they first started researching trafficking 20 years ago, a lot of progress had been made. “But we can do better.
We need more capacity to train people, more resources, more people to specialise in intelligence on trafficking for speedy prosecutions. More awareness is needed so the public knows what it is and how to identify it.”
Hope for the Future founder Vanessa Nelson said human trafficking often went undetected. “Once it’s exposed nothing gets done; traffickers just move to another area, for example with illegal domestic worker agencies.
Often people will be aware about what is going on at a certain house, but because our justice system fails us daily, people feel nothing will happen, so they turn a blind eye.”
Cape Times