The World Cup and South Africa's Struggle with Trafficking

As the World Cup nears – and with it, an expected increase in s*x trafficking – South Africa is taking long-overdue steps toward passing the country’s first law that would make human trafficking a stand-alone crime, punishable by life in prison.  The law also creates provisions to care for victims of trafficking and guards them against deportation, according to the Associated Press.

The law will be too late for thousands of young women and children who have already suffered as s*x slaves, many of them HIV positive.  Time Magazine reports that an estimated 38,000 children are trapped in South Africa’s s*x trade by more than 500 criminal trafficking syndicates that work with South African recruiters and corrupt officials.  Already, traffickers have seen an increase in demand from the influx of workers into South Africa as part of World Cup preparations.

South Africa’s failure to adequately address human trafficking for purposes of both the s*x trade and forced labor has come under closer scrutiny as the international sporting event approaches.  S*x tourism has increased over the past decades, and South Africa has grown to become a source, transit, and destination country for traffickers.  It is currently on the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Tier 2 Watch List because it has not met the minimum standards required to eliminate trafficking.

The country is, however, taking steps to bring this crime out into the open, where it belongs.  Carol Allais of the University of South Africa recently completed a study on trafficking in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, and Lesotho that was commissioned by South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority.  The first comprehensive investigation of human trafficking in South Africa, the report concluded that trafficking is a huge problem and affects thousands of people.  However, Allais and her team of researchers also reported that their ability to investigate was severely limited by the regional governments – many do not collect any sort of data on human trafficking, and some refused to allow the team access to officials who deal with trafficking.

Additional efforts are being made by both private and public entities to prevent the proliferation of s*x trafficking.  Churches in Africa have organized to educate their parishioners about the crime, and to be on the lookout for suspicious situations.  Schools are teaching their children how to protect themselves from traffickers.  The South African Government has collaborated with UNICEF to create Child Protection Week, and to establish several “child-friendly spaces,” where families with children can watch the games on big screen TVs for free, and children can play under the supervision of trained volunteers.

In addition, The International Organization on Migration (IOM) recently launched a campaign against trafficking called “The Campaign to Drop Sales.”  Now, conspicuous yellow posters with a hotline number to report trafficking, and proclaiming the horrifying fact that 4 million people disappear every year, forced into labor and prostitution, can be found all over South African cities.

If efforts such as these can make an impact on the crowds expected for the World Cup in South Africa, traffickers might not see the increase in demand that they currently predict.  With thousands of eyes alert to suspicious activity, many more women and children might be rescued from the chains of modern day slavery.