Human trafficking in South Africa: an elusive statistical nightmare
Due to the lack of reliable statistics surrounding human
trafficking, there is no real scope of how large the problem really is,
making it more difficult to police. Human trafficking is a global crime affecting countless
victims around the world. Yet its actual scope remains a mystery. The
methodologies used to arrive at estimates about its nature and extent
have been widely criticised as flawed or lacking in scientific rigour.
In South Africa, claims
by anti-trafficking campaigners and NGOs include that 30,000 children
are trafficked into the country annually as part of the sex trade. The
same figure has been used by the Department of Home Affairs to justify
recently introduced visa regulations aimed at combating child trafficking.
But this number has been discredited as “exaggerated and unsubstantiated”.
Human trafficking has become a focus of attention in the country
following the introduction of the onerous and controversial visa
requirements. In addition, a new act
aimed at preventing trafficking is expected to be operational in the
next few weeks. It defines trafficking to include the recruitment,
transportation, sale or harbour of people by means of force, deceit, the
abuse of vulnerability and the abuse of power for exploitation.
A statistical dilemma
But the absence of reliable statistics means that there is no clarity on just how big the problem is.
Inflated guesstimates continue to be used by those trying to stop the
crime. But they create a credibility dilemma, detract from a
constructive conversation and frustrate efforts to understand the
multi-layered realities of the problem.
Notwithstanding the lack of reliable numbers, the problem is
prevalent in South Africa. The number of cases being reported suggests
it is on the increase. The situation may in fact be far more chronic and severe than we know.
It is well documented
that South Africa is a source, transit and destination country for
human trafficking. This is backed up by a forthcoming book, Long Walk to
Nowhere: Forced Migration, Exploitation and Human Trafficking in South
Africa, by social scientist Philip Frankel. He dismisses sceptics and
exposes some of the unexplored and undocumented crevices in the mining
and labour sector suggestive of human trafficking.
My ongoing research draws on the experiences of role-players in
counter-human trafficking. These include all the responding agencies
including civil society, survivors and ex-perpetrators.
Preliminary themes highlight multiple accounts of undocumented cases,
direct and indirect complicity by political elites and bureaucratic
officials, the paucity of border controls, corruption and a culture of
impunity.
This toxic concoction makes human trafficking an attractive business
with high returns and low risk. For example, trafficking in persons for
sexual exploitation is the most documented type of trafficking, locally
and internationally. Yet none of the international syndicates dominating
the sex trade have ever been successfully prosecuted in South Africa.
A hidden and subversive crime
Society’s justifiable preoccupation with numbers to understand the
scope of the problem does little to promote understanding of the complex
issues associated with human trafficking.
Measures to combat the trade cannot be divorced from numerous other
structural issues. These include racism, poverty, unemployment,
education and inequality – all of which interpenetrate at some point.
The problem is further compounded by the absence of an official
database on human trafficking. There are also no crime codes in the
police service which capture the complexities of each reported incident.
Associated human trafficking offences are still subsumed into crimes
such rape, sexual assault, kidnapping, abduction and domestic violence.
Much of this is due to an inability by some police officials or
investigators to positively identify trafficking cases.
Many labour and sex trafficking victims don’t even know they are victims of a crime. Others, mostly children, are exploited in a distorted net of “culture”. These include aberrant forms of ukuthwala – meaning “to carry” in isiXhosa and isiZulu – a customary practice used to bypass extensive and lengthy marriage rituals.
Awareness about human trafficking across all sectors of society remains low. In addition, perceptions are often fuelled by skewed media representations. Hollywood movies like Taken and dramatic elements such as the use of force, kidnapping, and the brutality of perpetrators dominate discourses.
Misinformation is further fuelled by the fact that significant elements such as deceit, fraud, grooming, manipulation and trauma bonding often go unreported.
The possible link between missing persons and human trafficking also begs to be interrogated. In February 2014, the South African Police Services’ Missing Persons Bureau reported that 2641 adults and 754 children remain missing from cases reported between 2011 and 2013, a significant number for a mere two years.
Angie Motaung of Bana Ba Kae (“where are the children”), an NGO that works to alleviate the plight of children in poor communities in Pretoria, South Africa’s capital city, says that “there could be as many as 1000 children missing from homes across the city”.
Quantitative and qualitative data
Instead of trying to quantify the problem in terms of the number of human trafficking victims, the question we should be asking is: which communities are most vulnerable to human trafficking?
This would open the door to finding connections between measurable quantities on the one hand and qualities which cannot be counted but should be mapped on the other. Such a connection is crucial to understand the configuration of relationships in which the problem of human trafficking is rooted.
The hidden nature of the crime requires unconventional thinking and flexible methodologies to scope the problem. Every member of society should be empowered to be a co-participant in both quantitative and qualitative data collection. Community based participatory research methods could be used to do so. This would help find significant themes in the seemingly insignificant events of everyday life which may suggest the presence of “hidden transcripts” related to human trafficking.
Human trafficking presents a confluence of complexities. This denies us the convenience of an unambiguous and quantified understanding. The key lies in harnessing the complexity of the problem and acknowledging its deep and dense sociological abyss.
We need to redefine success in a way that is sensitive to the structural limitations of any given context. By doing so we may move towards a more even-handed understanding of the scope, nature and extent of human trafficking. It may also be more suitable to framing more appropriate policy and enforcement responses.
Lecturer in Police Practice at University of South Africa
Disclosure statement
Marcel van der Watt is affiliated with the National Freedom Network (NFN) and the Global Resource Epicenter Against human Trafficking (GREAT)The Conversation is funded by the National Research Foundation, the Knight Foundation and Barclays Africa. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a Strategic Partner.
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