South Africa is known to be a source, transit and destination country for men, women and children exploited for a variety of purposes by local and international organised crime syndicates and loose local networks of various sizes (U.S. Department of State, 2018: 390; Whittles, 2017; Frankel, 2016a; U.S. Department of State, 2013; HSRC, 2010; Bermudez, 2008; Cluver et al., 2007: 259). Root causes of this problem in South Africa include permeable borders, poverty, lack of employment, gender discrimination, and a lack of knowledge and information on the issue of trafficking (UNESCO, 2007: 32-38). Human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation is the most documented type of trafficking both locally and internationally (Swart, 2012: 65).
Organised crime operations also conduct other illicit operations such as drug trafficking, prostitution and the selling of counterfeit goods (Roelofse, 2011: 3).
“Widespread” and “rampant” trends in South Africa referred to by Warria (2017: 684-
685) include child sex tourism, forced marriage amongst teenage girls and sex trafficking, which “thrives” in mining camps.
Despite numerous reports of human trafficking in South Africa, successful investigations and subsequent convictions remain negligible (Kruger, 2016: 54-55). During August 2017, members of Parliament expressed apprehension regarding the low conviction rates of human trafficking cases affecting women and children. With the majority of victims being women and teenage girls, one ANC MP, Thandi Memela, was quoted as stating that she was “disturbed” by the poor conviction rates and lenient sentences (Capazorio, 2017).
The TIP report by the U.S. Department of State (2017) highlights numerous shortcomings in South Africa’s efforts to prosecute and convict traffickers successfully. Despite significant efforts by the South African government, the state still does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. According to the report the government severely under-budgeted for the implementation of the PACOTIP Act and did not comprehensively monitor or investigate forced child labour or labour trafficking of adults in the mining, agricultural, fishing and construction sector. Public officials allegedly complicit in cases of human trafficking were not prosecuted, and the SAPS was widely criticised for a lack of victim identification. Furthermore, the South African government made little progress in prosecuting traffickers linked to international syndicates involving Thai, Chinese, Russian, Bulgarian and Nigerian traffickers, who control the commercial sex trade in numerous South African cities (U.S. Department of State, 2017: 362-363). Even though police regularly evacuated alleged victims of sex trafficking, investigations against the perpetrators were not always initiated (U.S. Department of State, 2013: 333-335). As mentioned earlier, South Africa was downgraded to the Tier 2 Watch List in the most recent U.S. Department of State TIP report (2018: 388) owing to the government’s lack of sufficient funding for efforts to combat human trafficking, which has prevented front-line responders from fully implementing the current legislation.
In their study in which a number of lived experiences by stakeholders in the South African criminal justice system are explicated, Van der Watt and Van der Westhuizen (2017: 225) point to reductionist strategies by criminal justice practitioners, which inhibit an understanding of the whole and syndicated nature of trafficking operations in the country. Emser and Francis (2017: 3), on the other hand, mention a lack of formalised structure in South Africa’s counter-trafficking governance. The aforementioned governance is “fraught with operational and institutional challenges”, which give effect to poor coordination and leadership, and overreliance on ill-equipped provincial mechanisms mandated to prevent and combat human trafficking.
The lack of understanding of trafficking amongst both lay and professional people was identified as an inhibitor to the effective combating of human trafficking (HSRC, 2010: ix). Furthermore, as a regional phenomenon in southern Africa, the extent to which the trafficking of men exists and the purposes for which its victims are trafficked suffer from a similar lack of attention (Allais, 2013: 40). The legal discipline has, according to Van der Westhuizen (2015: 8), made a substantial contribution to knowledge about South Africa’s human trafficking legislative framework. Numerous studies that cover multilayered strata and arguments within the South African legal and legislative arena have been conducted (Kruger, 2016; Prinsloo & Ovens, 2015; Dafel, 2014; Kreston, 2014; Mollema, 2014; Mollema, 2013; Kruger, 2012; Sigfridsson, 2012; Kruger & Oosthuizen, 2011; Mwambene & Sloth-Nielsen, 2011; Kruger, 2010; Mashiyi, 2010; Najemy, 2010; Koyana & Bekker, 2007; Kreston, 2007; Rotman, 2005; Legget, 2004). As discussed earlier, the PACOTIP Act is now operational7 and is deemed to be an effective prosecuting tool that meets international prosecution standards (Kruger, 2016: 84).
Prominent texts on the issue of human trafficking in South Africa range from biographical accounts by victims sharing their lived experiences (Grootboom, 2016; Hough-Coetzee & Kruger, 2015) to an exposé of the transnational drug trade’s connection with human trafficking in South Africa (Friedman, 2014). Friedman (2014) meticulously documents how numerous South Africans end up in international prisons
7 Unfortunately, the protection and assistance measures regarding foreign victims of trafficking in the
Act, namely sections 15, 16 and 31(2)(b)(ii), have not come into operation yet. This was explained in the ‘Commencement of the Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Act, 2013 (Act no. 7 of 2013)’ Proclamation R 32 Government Gazette no. 39078, 7 August 2015.
in countries as far afield as Thailand, Brazil, India, Nepal, China, Mozambique and Mauritius. As a conservative figure, over 1000 convicted South African drug mules are detained abroad (Friedman, 2014: viii). Many of these South Africans were duped or coerced into the trafficking of drugs by syndicates comprising South African and Nigerian nationals, and Friedman emphatically calls for these cases to be reconsidered as incidents of human trafficking. Friedman (2014: xi) elaborates on the significance of criminal power and political corruption as compounding factors, and on the incompetence and complete indifference of the public servants and police officials mandated to heed the plight of their citizens detained in a foreign country (Friedman, 2014: 120).
The most comprehensive text written on the issue of human trafficking in South Africa thus far is Frankel’s (2016a) Long Walk to Nowhere: Human Trafficking in Post-
Mandela South Africa. Apart from the detailed and multifaceted discussion on human
trafficking, the text provides the first seminal insights into issues concerning the bane of labour trafficking, illicit mining, farm labour and domestic servitude in South Africa. Frankel (2016a: 2) points to the hidden domain of transactions in human beings that subsists “behind the façade of an iconic constitutional democracy” and argues that some of the worst variations of trafficking and modern slavery continue unabated behind the gracious surface of the ‘rainbow’ nation (Frankel, 2016a: 3). South Africa is said to have a perfect climate for human trafficking, with Frankel (2016a: 4) deconstructing the enabling environment and concluding that it would be quite bizarre if South Africa did not have a trafficking problem. Frankel (2016a) also corroborates and complements the findings by Friedman (2014) about the nexus between the international drug trade and human trafficking in South Africa. He points to a growing proportion of South African females who are forced into drug trafficking systems and end up in international prisons (Frankel, 2016a: 38). In his final analysis, Frankel (2016a: 254) quite woefully discusses a range of internal and external factors that not only enable significant business opportunities for traffickers, but guarantee that the
“ruthless sale of people, arms and drugs” can be expected as a scourge in South and
southern Africa in the foreseeable time to come.
Valuable insights into the modus operandi of traffickers in the South African context were gleaned from a Masters study by Pardhoothman (2015), who found that there
are many similarities in how the crime is perpetrated locally and in other countries around the world. An increasing number of doctoral studies have also come to the fore. With a focus on South Africa’s efforts to combat human trafficking, Kruger (2010) offers a legal perspective whilst Mollema (2013) conducted a comprehensive diachronic and modern-day overview of the prevention and punishment of human trafficking in South Africa, and included a comparative analysis of legal systems in the US, Germany and Nigeria. Mollema (2013: iii) also notes that colonisation, the institution of slavery and South Africa’s history of apartheid have impacted on modern human trafficking in the country.
In a Political Science doctoral study by Emser (2013), which used complexity theory to conceptualise the politics of human trafficking in South Africa, the research focussed on first establishing the existence of a fundamental set of claims regarding human trafficking in South Africa. It then set out to ascertain the tension between formal responses and the political, moral or institutional agendas of participants and, third, how this manifests within the KZN human trafficking task team and in other similar settings. The KZN intersectoral task team was used as a case study, with participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 39 role-players as methods of data collection. A firm contribution of the study was the analysis of the impact of politics, in the form of discourse and agendas, on the response to human trafficking.
In her Police Science doctoral study, Horne (2014) critically analyses how human trafficking for sexual exploitation can be identified, with the purpose of developing practical guidelines for use during the identification of the crime. Acknowledging the range of role-players in the criminal justice system, the “centre of [the] study was
concentrated on the SAPS” as one of the key role-players (Horne, 2014: 331). With
26 participants included in the study, the contribution was rooted in the creation of knowledge surrounding the identification of human trafficking for sexual exploitation incidents in South Africa and the presentation of useful practical guidelines for the identification of the crime (Horne, 2014: 335).
Complexity theory and Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory of human development were used by Van der Westhuizen (2015) in her Psychology doctoral study, which focussed on human trafficking in the Eastern Cape. A sample of ten participants was included in the study, with whom open-ended and unstructured interviews were
conducted as data-collection method. The two main themes that emanated from the ten participants’ perspectives relate to the significance of non-linear interactions between traffickers and trafficked persons, and the ‘major’ impediment posed by the lack of witness credibility and its compounding effect on human trafficking prosecutions (Van der Westhuizen, 2015: xiv).
2.6.2 Scope, Nature and Extent of Human Trafficking
South Africa is no exception when it comes to problematic discourse surrounding the scope, nature and extent of human trafficking in the country (Emser & Francis, 2017; Skosana & Wilkinson, 2017; Van der Watt, 2015b; Chiumia & Wilkinson, 2013). This research identified a number of permeating themes that have dominated the discourse around the issues of scope and prevalence of human trafficking in South Africa over the past 14 years since 2004. These themes include, first, a large number of media statements that refer to numerous incidents of trafficking or trafficking-related exploitation, brothel raids and related law enforcement actions, victim narratives and rescues, all of which suggest, quite convincingly, that human trafficking is in fact an enormous modern-day social ill that South Africa is grappling with. Second, and with due consideration to the hidden nature and hidden populations associated with studying human trafficking, there appears to be a lack of rigorous research that explores, or makes any significant efforts to quantify, the scope, nature and extent of human trafficking in South Africa. Concomitantly, the number of arrests and successful human trafficking convictions appear disproportionately low in comparison to reported cases and the estimated scope of the problem as portrayed in the media or other trafficking-related literature in South Africa. Third, a persistent, and often vociferous, response from a small group of scholars and pro-prostitution advocates arguing that human trafficking is overwhelmingly exaggerated as a problem in South Africa and often conflated with ‘sex work’. It is argued that unsubstantiated reports are fuelled by a lack of evidence-based research, ‘moral panic’ and an anti-prostitution agenda.
In response to the dearth of research on human trafficking in South Africa in the six- year period following the advent of the Palermo Protocol in 2000, Pharoah (2006: 2) underscores the urgent need for research that establishes the full scope of human trafficking in South Africa. In a monograph that aimed to inform and motivate more extensive and representative research in South Africa, Pharoah (2006: 23) reported
that no official statistics on human trafficking in South Africa exist. Furthermore, only a small number of studies were found that explored the issue of trafficking in South Africa. These studies drew almost entirely on three sources of primary research, which were Molo Songololo (2000a), Molo Songololo (2000b) and Martens, Pieczkowski and Van Vuuren-Smyth (2003).
Notwithstanding the lack of well-explicated statistics on the scope of human trafficking in South Africa in these three sources, Martens et al. (2003: 107) estimate that between 850 and 1100 Thai victims of trafficking arrive in the country annually, whilst at least 1000 Mozambican victims are recruited, transported and exploited in this way every year, earning traffickers approximately ZAR 1 million annually (Martens et al., 2003: 128). In its study, Molo Songololo8 (2000a: 27) refers to an estimated 28 000 child prostitutes in South Africa. In questioning the drive by South Africa to create specialised human trafficking legislation, Legget (2004: 1) states that human trafficking
“calls to mind images of children being snatched from the streets into dark panel vans, stowed in the holds of cargo ships, and dumped in a foreign brothel or work camp far from their mothers’ arms”. Notwithstanding human trafficking being a horrific crime,
Legget (2004) argues that the actual scale of the problem in South Africa remains a mystery.
On 15 May 2004, South Africa won the bid to host the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup (South African History Online, 2011). This was indeed a good news story for the ten- year-old South African democracy and, in conjunction with South Africa’s then recent ratification of the Palermo Protocol, signified the dawn of a new chapter in the country’s human trafficking narrative. This period was characterised by significant awareness- raising efforts around the issue of human trafficking, which progressively intensified as the 2010 Soccer World Cup drew closer. Statistics on the scope of human trafficking increasingly became an area of contention, with snowballing concern being raised around the ‘nexus’ between an increase in human trafficking and major sporting events (like the forthcoming Soccer World Cup). Sanpath (2006:120) pointed to “thousands
of women and girl-children that are trafficked into South Africa every year” and
underscored concerns raised by NGOs that this “already high number” would escalate
8 Molo Songololo is a designated child protection organisation based in the Western Cape whose main
target group and beneficiaries are children and youth between 10 and 17 years of age from poor rural and urban communities (see http://www.molosongololo.com/).
“drastically” during South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 Soccer World Cup. The notion
of 40 000 prostitutes being trafficked into South Africa became commonplace in discourse surrounding the Soccer World Cup (Tacopino, 2010; The Telegraph, 2010), with estimations of the volume of people that would fall victim to human trafficking before the World Cup escalating to as many as 100 000 people (Gould, 2010a). Other reports related to the Soccer World Cup suggested that South Africa’s children were
“under threat” and quoted child rights’ experts, NGOs and trafficking authorities, who
warned parents to be on high alert for syndicates targeting children, “particularly those
aged five to 15, as ‘products’ and ‘cargo’ with lucrative price tags” (Laganparsad,
2010).
In May 2013, the Salvation Army told daily newspaper The Star that awareness around the issue of child trafficking in South Africa was lacking and highlighted that the 2010 figure of 20 000 to 30 000 child prostitutes now stood at 45 000 (Mkize, 2013). In an October 2013 Times Live report, experts estimated that 30 000 children were being trafficked in South Africa every year, with half of them being under the age of 14. It was also reported that “black South African girls are being trafficked to Germany and
the Netherlands, where they are seen as exotic” whilst “in Hong Kong, they want white girls” (Masombuka, 2013). Persistent media reports and coverage of incidents that
appear to fall within the legislative ambit of textbook human trafficking cases continue (Dube, 2016a; Dube, 2016b; Forrester, 2016; Narsee, 2015; RDM News Wire, 2015; Thelwell, 2014; Thelwell & Van der Merwe, 2014; Hosken, 2013).
In Horne’s (2014) research, 18 police participants from the SAPS revealed that 132 human trafficking-related cases were investigated by them over a period between 2007 and 2011. In response to the scarcity of reliable data on the scale and character of human trafficking in South Africa, the LexisNexis Human Trafficking Awareness Index (LexisNexis, 2015: 4) was created, which serves as an approximation, using the Nexis database service to track and analyse the volume of news articles related to human trafficking in South Africa. For the period January to December 2014, the LexisNexis Human Trafficking Awareness Index identified 432 unique articles published by the South African media. Some of the key approximations include:
93 potential victims trafficked into and within South Africa during the reported period,based on the 432 South African media reports; 76 of these potential victims were adults while 17 were children;
54 potential victims of migrant smuggling with the end purpose of exploitation. This represents more than half (58%) of all potential victims identified;
24 potential victims of sexual exploitation; 16 were women and 8 were girls; 6 potential victims of forced labour. All were females (5 adults and 1 minor); 2 potential victims of forced marriage; and
2 potential victims of body part trafficking (ritual killing or muti9 purposes).
The 2016 Global Slavery Index (Walk Free, 2016) found that South Africa has an estimated 248 700 people living in conditions of modern slavery, of whom 43% were or are subjected to commercial sexual exploitation in a sex industry thriving on the street, in brothels and in private residences. Nigerian sex trafficking syndicates operating between the provinces of North West, Gauteng and KZN were identified in the report. Other findings include an estimated 10 600 women as victims of forced marriage and more than 200 000 workers subjected to forced labour in the country. Of the 200 000 estimated forced labourers, an estimated 11% of victims are exploited in construction, 5% in farming and 8% in drug production. Most recently, the 2018 Global Slavery Index (Walk Free, 2018) found that South Africa has an estimated 155 000 people living in modern slavery, with the country positioned at 110 out of 167 on the Prevalence Index Rank. The disparity between the 2016 and 2018 estimations brings little comfort in the quest to answer the question: ‘how big is the problem?’ Rather, it reinforces the notion that the complexity and hidden nature of the crime prevent the phenomenon from being accurately quantified.
A number of authors have criticised the lack of evidence-based studies and assertions around the issue of human trafficking in South Africa, its estimated scope and the research methods that underpin these studies (De Gruchy, Quirk, Richter & Veary,
9 The word ‘muti’ is a Zulu word which means medicine. The use of muti is usually linked to the belief
that it will improve an individual’s or community’s circumstances. It is mostly advocated by a traditional healer. Body parts are often included in muti as they are considered more powerful than the usual ingredients as they contain the ‘life essence’ of a person. The usual ingredients may include herbs, roots, plant material, sea water and animal parts. It is traditionally believed that the removal of body parts whilst the victim is alive increases the ‘power’ of the muti because the person’s life essence is then retained in the body parts (Labuschagne, 2004: 192-193).
2015; Quirk & Richter, 2015; Wolfson-Vorster, 2015; Chiumia & Wilkinson, 2013; Gould, 2010b). In a critique of Walk Free’s 2014 Global Slavery Index’s extrapolation protocol, which “verges on the ludicrous”, Gallagher (2014) points to flaws in the