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.
The African National Congress (ANC) ruling party of South Africa did not inherit a failed state in 1994, and after 21 years of rule, are progressively turning the country into chaos. The 1985 Rubicon speech by P. W. Botha raised political risks for the country, the ruling National Party (NP) and business. In 1986, the ANC party became concerned that the country was fast becoming a failed state. The liberation movement realized that inheriting a failed state would destroy all chances of bringing about desired development upon assumption of power of South Africa.
At that time, the NP controlled all state resources, power, and the military, and the ANC negotiated a peaceful transition from a position of weakness. The process of political reform caused rifts between the Afrikaners. The hardliners, led by President P.W. Botha and top business executives, had a stake in the initial talks. At the upper part of the ANC’s mind was to inherit a country with the high potential to meet the needs of the poor masses, who were the only support base of the movement.
What options did the ANC have? Did they have to risk the scorched earth retreat by Afrikaners and adopt a hard line approach towards negotiations? The ANC received lessons from some African countries, especially those that were colonized by Portugal, where the infrastructure was destroyed as it lost power. Some of its colonies were left in the dark figuratively and practically. Therefore, it is easy to say that the ANC conveniently sold out, as if it was in complete control of all levers of power and influence. It was more about getting maximum benefit from an apparently complicated situation.
The interim agreement, which is called a sunset clause, was to guarantee white public servants, police, and army employees full-time employment between 1994 and 1999. This agreement was necessary because most senior and middle management positions were held by white employees. The ANC needed the whites to stay on while a smooth transition and hand over to black control was advancing. It was necessary because if the ANC did not have the expertise in these fields, the ruling party would have destroyed the system. If the ANC told nurses, teachers, post office clerks, water engineers, electricians, and all essential workers that they had a week to leave, there would have been an inherited chaos.
Freedom starts with understanding the crux of the colonial system and then designing and developing its direct opposite – not primitive methods to bring about liberation. The ANC could not be a liberator organization without a liberator theory. The set of communist clichés borrowed from the West have never worked in Africa; nationalization and all the Populists represented no path to freedom but the state capitalist model. The theory that the ANC was revolutionary and changed course somewhere is a fantasy. South Africa is no different from anywhere in Africa; the elites jump into the shoes of the retreating colonists and assume it will be easy to turn the entire country around. The ANC may have dropped into the shoes and, by doing so, have become colonialists, which is what neocolonialism is about: indigenization.
Shame the devil, as the ANC got out with nothing from those negotiations other than Mandela as president of South Africa. The National Party, the Democratic Alliance, and the Bantustan leaders swept the table clean. The ANC did not know what it was doing at the negotiating table other than accepting the power that was being transferred at the insistence of the United States. However, they did not inherit a failed state, and no one can say the ANC sold out because it did not carry anybody’s mandate. The ANC was negotiating for itself. The National Party and apartheid-opposition political parties of South Africa got a mandate through the referendum.
One cannot help but sympathize with the rhetoric of labeling the ANC as the grandest traitor of the lot. The fact is that transition is a process, and it may take years to reverse the injustices of apartheid. Sadly, the very same proponents of this reality are swimming in a pool of wealth that took many around the world to amass over decades. One is bound to make an unfair statement that the masses were sold down the river. If reversing the imbalances of the past is a long, cumbersome process, why are so many in government living in opulence? Can anybody blame the Economic Freedom Fighters for propagating such a populist discourse? In politics, unfortunately, perception eventually becomes a reality. The reality is, the majority in South Africa are beginning to feel as if they have been sold down the river, while the ANC politicians and their goons continue to disprove that poverty can be reversed overnight. Turning South Africa into a failed state appears to be the goal of the ruling party.
The sanctimonious attitude of the majority in South Africa has been combined with foolishness, and as democracy progresses, the division among cultural groups releases racial hatred that only deepens a raging conflict. The diverse cultures of South Africa have, over the past 21 years, escalated into a “holier than thou” attitude from the black majority toward the minorities.
For centuries, blacks have been defined as brutal criminals wanting revenge on the white minority group of South Africa. Over the years, blacks have been described as stupid, irrational and unintelligent, whereas the white minority has been defined as superior, talented, intelligent and victims of crime.
The African traditions are characterized as barbaric; blacks are lazy and African history is primitive and does not contribute to civilization. Today, Africa is riddled with violence, disaster, diseases and overpopulation. Blacks live in squalid conditions, transmit sexual diseases such as HIV/AIDS and are prone to injury.
No government is without fault, yet the South African government has exhausted every conceivable trick in the book, tipping the scales of corruption and forcing power-hungry leaders to break social order. Incompetent and incapable of leading a democracy, the leaders fail the majority by forcing poverty to intensify.
Until democracy began in 1994, blacks were excluded from equal participation in the life and culture of South Africa. Whether discrimination or forced slavery, blacks believe it was the Action of Apartheid that consciously established a deliberate pattern of exclusion and low self-esteem. The South African government is comfortable, and affirmative action is racial discrimination. Blacks are executing racism, and empowerment gives rise to a sanctimonious attitude.
Today the self-hate and exclusion are gone, and the pride and power of unity have replaced the dehumanizing apartheid system of the past. No longer is the unworthy and insulting white-man’s voice lording over the majority. No longer are tears flowing, and children are not abandoned. The fear of the future is no longer a nightmare under the South African democracy. Freedom has replaced a demonized system, giving rise to social equality and opportunities reserved for whites only under the apartheid system.
Sanctimonious attitudes have grown among the few elite who have had 21 years to access the richer, modern and once-safe suburbs reserved for whites only in the past. Equality and opportunities abound for the few who are not afraid to step out into a future where race is no longer a factor; a new world, a better place and the beginning of envy as the unparalleled beauty of life unfolds. The reality of a bitter past shakes the new life of equality, and comparison soon develops into a feverish race to become equal to the minority. No longer satisfied with a black skin, women begin to rebel against the shell of the Caucasian beauty. White is a standard color, and nobody wants to be called a non-white, because it turns into a status of recognition and self-righteousness.
The majority who missed opportunities to get away from the “gangsterism,” cruelty and violence of townships remain dependent on the elected government to deliver on promises of free housing, free water and electricity, grants for having children, subsidies for the elderly, free medical and free education. Life was good, everything was free until the promises trickled in so slowly that crime intensified in the townships and spiraled toward the suburbs.
A mindset of entitlement developed as the masses were directed by influential leaders who promised a good story, and soon the hatred of whites developed into a raging war of attacks. Crime increased and farm murders began in earnest; whites were driven from the land in an attempt to escape the savage torture and brutality. The white minority started to live in fear as the masses took revenge for the past. It is no longer a question of uniting a democratic country; it is now a country where only the fittest survive.
The government ignored the high rise of crime statistics, the failing infrastructure, the poor education system and almost non-existent medical structures as well as the massive influx of foreigners, mainly from neighboring countries that failed to develop under black rule, searching for a better life. The government could not deal with the atrocities happening within the borders of South Africa, because there were far too many other fires to kill. The corruption, the Arms deal, the HIV debacle, the tender fraud, the Nkandla story; the list goes on, yet the greed and self-enrichment have no end.
The black youth, useless and unemployed, walk aimlessly around the dirty streets of the townships, sentenced to life without hope. The white man remains the cause of the misery, and the leaders continue to follow in the footsteps of African leaders who are turning South Africa into another wretched country while the few elite continue to display the foolish attitude of excluding minorities and adopting a self-destruct mode of living. It is not about preserving white supremacy and privilege; it is about the majority being incapable of transforming itself and inhabiting self-humiliation.
WE CREATED A GROUP ON FACEBOOK FOR NATASHA - PLEASE JOIN TO RECEIVE UPDATED ABOUT HER PROGRESS AND READ THE STORIES ABOUT HOW CARING PEOPLE ARE. “Good things come to those who wait… greater things come to those who get off their ass and do anything to make it happen.” – Unknown. Life is never without hope and for Natasha, there will be a happy ending. “The pain you feel today is the strength you feel tomorrow. For every challenge encountered there is opportunity for growth.” – Unknown *******************************************************************************************************
Natasha was transferred to
the Johannesburg Hospital and had her left leg just above the knee amputated
yesterday. She is very confused, in excruciating pain and cannot understand why
she lost her leg. We all presumed that she would only lose a foot, and it was a shock to discover that the
doctors had no choice but to slice off half of her leg. I spoke to one of the physicians who explained that it was caused by a blood infection that was left
untreated for too long and so gangrene
started and spread quiet quickly.
Natasha Left Leg Amputated July 13, 2015
Today she was transferred back to the
South Rand Hospital, and I am unsure what
will happen now. I saw her this afternoon for a few minutes and will visit her
tomorrow. I hope to understand what treatment the hospital will offer and if
they will send her to a rehabilitation center.
A friend of mine found her mother, Vesna
on Facebook and we managed to get her contact numbers. I spoke to her mother today and explained the situation, and I am disturbed by the attitude and wonder if it is worth the trouble
to involve the mother. As Natasha has been on
her own for so many years, and I do not think, the mother will be able to take
care of her.
Natasha needs to be placed in a
home that will help her deal with the trauma and depression. We are busy trying
to get the welfare involved and I have sent emails to various institutions who
offer support for the underprivileged and traumatised people, but I have not
had any response. I will honestly say that I have not found any caring individuals
or institutions that are willing to help. It is rather sad.
Well I will keep posting updates about the
progress and keep on praying that somebody in Johannesburg, South Africa will
offer to help Natasha. I do believe she deserves a chance to change her life,
after all the years of abuse and neglect.
Links to previous post (just in case you missed the entire
story)
While corruption at the heart of government is enough to make good men despair, the resurgence of racism and farm murders in South Africa intensifies the fear levels of all races. The new injection of race-hatred malevolence from Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), and the resurrection of white extremism leads society into a new dilemma. There are a recorded 116 farm attacks and 27 farm deaths reported in the first half of this year. Farm murders are linked to racial hatred and idiocies from Malema, who advocates that all land belong to blacks.
The Limpopo province has experienced the most farm attacks this year, closely followed by Mpumalanga. The EFF and Malema have massive support bases in these regions, and the atrocities against humanity have become the order of the day. It is disheartening that there has never been a revelation of the true nature of the EFF political party. What Malema is doing to South Africa is tantamount to treason. Malema is destructive and careless and represents in every conceivable way what failure would look like for South Africa. The damage Malema has done will only get worse.
Malema is a poorly educated man, who mysteriously acquired lavish houses, a fleet of cars and a fortune, then rose to fame as the attack dog of President Jacob Zuma. Malema would threaten violence against anybody who sought to block Zuma from his rise to state president. When Zuma was elected president, Malema was in the pound seat. Now Zuma is the new enemy, and Malema will haul insults and attack the president in a political maneuver to gain votes. Malema utters buffoon politics mixed with crude populism and sinister racial demagoguery.
Malema openly professes a dislike for the children of colonialists. Often, he will say there is no hatred of white people, but there is hatred of the quality of whiteness. The farm murders in South Africa are blatant racist crimes which intensify the fear level which exists throughout the country. Researcher Lorraine Claasen from AfriForum, the civil rights organization, said this year’s farm attacks appeared to be more violent in nature. The media have reported on the horrific ways innocent people are tortured before being murdered, and confirmation that the violence is now more aggressive is an indication of repressed hatred against whites.
It has been reported that none of the victims, who are usually tied up by the attackers who then gather information about the property, were children. Where arrests have been made, less than 24 percent have resulted in convictions. The low conviction count is confirmation that the South African government has not committed to ending the farm attacks. Farmers risk their lives to feed the nation, and the government does nothing to secure the food production.
The African National Congress (ANC) has lost its soul and does not consider the importance of feeding the nation. Farm attacks are not random; this is genocide and a protracted terror campaign aimed at removing white people from farms. Farm attacks are sanctioned by the ANC and EFF. President Zuma and the land redistribution rhetoric, coupled with Malema’s encouraging voters to occupy the land, will eventually force whites to be removed from the land through either murder, terror or violence.
Farm attacks are done slowly over a period of years and by doing so, do not attract attention from the international community. Every time a farm murder is splashed over the media, it does not draw attention to what is happening in South Africa – it is portrayed as another unfortunate crime. Nobody notices the slow genocide of the whites. The ANC and EFF have all the time in the world to cleanse South Africa of whites and are stepping up the attacks as the country tumbles into chaos.
Being a farmer in South Africa is the most dangerous job in the world. Where else in the world would a government ignore the alarming high rate of farm murders? The ANC government sweeps the farm attacks under the carpet, glossing them over as an ordinary crime, with no concern being raised. The masses do not want undeveloped bushland that will require a lot of hard work, when it is far easier to go after white-owned farms that are productive and developed.
The manner in which the farmers and families are tortured before being murdered is savage behavior, and includes burning people with an iron, chopping people with pangas, raping the women, and targeting the elderly. It is barbaric and inhumane to watch people suffer and die. Astoundingly, the savages do not steal much, but will spend hours torturing the land owners instead. South Africa is in a heap of trouble, the fear level of its people is intensifying, and it is not getting better. A ray of hope exists in the opportunity that the civil rights organization, AfriForum, will have to inform the world, at an Australian conference later this month, about the brutal crimes committed against farmers in South Africa .
