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SOUTHERN AFRICA: Migrants find sex trade a dead end street

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

JOHANNESBURG, 19 April (PLUSNEWS) - Last March Janet (not her real name) took a hard look at her prospects and made a drastic decision. Equipped with little more than a friend's phone number, she joined the growing number of Zimbabweans who cross illegally into South Africa every day, looking for a better life.

She felt she knew all about living in South Africa because a friend came home regularly from Johannesburg with gifts for everyone and stories of how well she was doing, and had suggested Janet join her.

Her friend seemed surprised when Janet called to say she had arrived. She said she could not meet her, but directed Janet to a hotel in the city where she could get a job. The hotel's bar was populated by women in skimpy clothing, but Janet did not immediately grasp the situation. "I had never done that kind of work before," said the shy 23-year-old. "It was my first time."

According to Khopotso Nakin, director of the New Life Centre for Girls, an NGO, Janet's story is far from unusual: of the estimated 10,000 commercial sex workers in Hillbrow, a rough inner-city neighbourhood where many hotels double as brothels, 20 percent come from other parts of Africa.

"I never heard of any girl who came here to do sex work," Nakin said. "They come looking for a better living and hoping that their lives will change. Then, most of them get a surprise when they come here."

Without legal documents, and far from their homes in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Lesotho and elsewhere, newly arrived female migrants are often forced into sex work simply because they lack alternatives.

Typically, the women have had few educational opportunities and many dropped out of school. Even with the necessary documents, their chances of finding other work are slim.

"Most say they want to move out [of the hotels], that they know they're being exploited and would leave if they could," Nakin explained. "But they can't find work and they're stigmatised for what they do."

Funding from South Africa's Department of Health enabled her to set up the centre last year to provide women with more options. Nakin and her co-workers regularly visit hotels where sex workers operate and invite the women to come to the centre in the adjacent suburb of Berea for free skills training.

Janet started visiting the centre in June 2005. She had been able to send some money home to her parents and five siblings in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second city, but lived in fear that her family would discover how she had earned it. "I thought, let me just get out of this place before I get too used to it."

She had stayed away from the drugs that keep many women locked into prostitution and moved out of the hotel in July, and started working at the centre as a peer educator five months later. Janet and 10 other former sex workers now visit the hotels to talk to the women about opportunities at the centre, hand out condoms and encourage them to go to the nearby Esselen Street Clinic for HIV counselling and testing.

The R600 ($95) a month stipend she earns as a peer educator is not much more than what she earned in a good night at the hotel - it covers her rent and not much more, meaning she can no longer respond to her mother's letters pleading for her to send money home. Still, Janet has no plans to return to sex work or to Zimbabwe. "I think my life is going to change," she said.

Non-South Africans have difficulty accessing health services, but a programme started by the Reproductive Health Research Unit (RHRU), a privately funded organisation attached to the University of the Witwatersrand, run by the Esselen Street Clinic, offers free counselling and testing services to sex workers regardless of their citizenship.

In an attempt to reach women distrustful of public clinics, or sleeping when the facility is usually open, a mobile clinic takes sexually transmitted infection (STI) treatment services and AIDS education to 15 hotels in the area.

Janet has not been tested for HIV since she came to South Africa, but says she always insisted that clients use a condom and made a deliberate decision not to have boyfriends. "As soon as girls get a boyfriend, they think they can trust them and stop using condoms," she commented.

Tiisetso Motloung, who heads the RHRU's sex worker outreach programme, confirms that sex workers most often lapse in using condoms with their boyfriends rather than their clients, putting themselves at risk.

[ENDS]