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Elucidating the reality of human trafficking in South Africa

12 October 2020 | Story Nonsindiso Qwabe | Photo Anja Aucamp

How big is the human trafficking problem in South Africa? Whereas most crimes are generally reported to the police, trafficking is not, mainly because victims fear retaliation. Thus, exact statistics on human trafficking are not available anywhere in the world. But one thing is for sure; trafficking is an indisputable and systemic reality in South Africa. This is according to Prof Beatri Kruger, Research Fellow in the Centre for Human Rights at the University of the Free State.

Prof Kruger’s research on human trafficking spans a decade, and she said as human trafficking gets more public attention, more cases are coming to the fore. “This is a good thing, because if you know the enemy and the modus operandi, you won’t be misled easily.”

Prof Kruger said for the past five years, South Africa has been classified as a country of origin, transit, and destination for trafficking by the annual US Trafficking in Persons Reports.

An increasing number of trafficking convictions

What this means is that victims are trafficked from South Africa to other countries; foreign victims are moved through the country to other areas for exploitation, while foreign victims are also brought from elsewhere in the world to the country as their final destination.

“The trafficking reality is not based on speculation. We have solid evidence that there is a very serious problem,” Prof Kruger said. According to police statistics, a significant number of 2 132 cases of human trafficking were reported to the SAPS under the current Trafficking Act from 2015 to 2017. Also, apart from five empirical doctorate studies, this reality is further confirmed by an increasing number of trafficking convictions in our courts.

Prof Kruger said these convictions provide significant insights into human trafficking in South Africa. Firstly, victims are seldom being kidnapped and taken by force. Instead, traffickers prefer to trick and trap victims by misleading them with false promises of a better life. Court cases exposed that many are misled by fabricated well-paid jobs or educational opportunities. The cases further reveal how traffickers submit their victims to various forms of exploitation. Aldina dos Santos [S v Dos Santos [2018 1 SACR 20 (GP)] was sentenced to life imprisonment for cunningly transporting Mozambican girls to her Gauteng residence, where they were forced to use drugs and perform sexual services to multiple paying clients. The court further imposed eight life sentences on Loyd Mabuza [S v Lloyd Mabuza 2018 2 SACR 54 (GP)] for holding four Mozambican girls between the ages of 10 and 16 captive as sex slaves for three years in the Sabi district. In S v Matini [case no. RC 123/2013 EC)], several South African victims, including mentally challenged girls, were sexually exploited in a brothel near Port Elizabeth. The two female traffickers in S v Seleso [case no. SS45/2018 (GJ)], who forced an orphaned girl into prolonged online sexual exploitation, were each sentenced to 19 life sentences. Convictions were also secured in other forms of exploitation, such as labour trafficking. In Mpumalanga, a boy of only six years old was forced into child labour. In the Pinetown area, children were provided at a price in illegal adoption scams: some children were sold for up to R15 000. Babies were also commodified and traded – in KwaZulu-Natal, a mother even advertised her baby on Gumtree for R5 000. “In most cases, there were either multiple victims, multiple traffickers, or both, and multiple places of exploitation.”

Prof Kruger said there is still a need for more empirical research on the prevalence of all forms of human trafficking. She is currently involved in a comprehensive research project focusing on human trafficking in South Africa.

Assisting the public

Despite the challenges to combat trafficking, several milestones are also worth celebrating, she said. There is a toll-free 24/7 national human trafficking hotline available to assist the public, the National Freedom Network consists of vetted individuals and more than 70 organisations joining forces to combat trafficking, while important counter-trafficking information is available at www.nationalfreedomnetwork.co.za, and successful prosecutions are increasing, to name just a few.

Tips to keep you safe:

-Do not believe everything you read on social media. Evaluate and verify the source, time, and date before believing it or sending it on to others.
-Have a code that you share with your family and friends that you can use to alert them if you are in danger.
- Remember that there is safety in numbers. Do not walk or jog alone in secluded areas.
- If a trafficker attempts to grab you, make a scene so that other people can notice.
- Alert especially students to employment scams – verify job offers by calling the Trafficking Hotline.
- Report any suspicion of trafficking to the police, and also to the Trafficking Hotline.

If you need information or help, call the National Human Trafficking Hotline on +27 0800 222 777

News Archive

NRF researcher addresses racial debates in classrooms

2017-03-24

Description: Dr Marthinus Conradie Tags: Dr Marthinus Conradie

Dr Marthinus Conradie, senior lecturer in the
Department of English, is one of 31 newly-rated National
Research Foundation researchers at the University of
the Free State.
Photo: Rulanzen Martin

Exploring numerous norms and assumptions that impede the investigation of racism and racial inequalities in university classrooms, was central to the scope of the research conducted by Dr Marthinus Conradie, a newly Y-rated National Research Foundation (NRF) researcher.

Support from various colleagues
He is one of 31 newly-rated researchers at the University of the Free State (UFS) and joins the 150 plus researchers at the university who have been rated by the NRF. Dr Conradie specialises in sociolinguistics and cultural studies in the UFS Department of English. “Most of the publications that earned the NRF rating are aimed to contributing a critical race theoretic angle to longstanding debates about how questions surrounding race and racism are raised in classroom contexts,” he said.

Dr Conradie says he is grateful for the support from his colleagues in the Department of English, as well as other members of the Faculty of the Humanities. “Although the NRF rating is assigned to a single person, it is undoubtedly the result of support from a wide range of colleagues, including co-authors Dr Susan Brokensha, Prof Angelique van Niekerk, and Dr Mariza Brooks, as well as our Head of Department, Prof Helene Strauss,” he said.

Should debate be free of emotion?
His ongoing research has not been assigned a title yet, as he and his co-author does not assign titles prior to drafting the final manuscript. “Most, but not all, of the publications included in my application to the NRF draw from discourse analysis of a Foucauldian branch, including discursive psychology,” Dr Conradie says. His research aims to suggest directions and methods for exploring issues about race, racism, and racial equality relating to classroom debates. One thread of this body of work deals with the assumption that classroom debates must exclude emotions. Squandering opportunities to investigate the nature and sources of the emotions provoked by critical literature, might obstruct the discussion of personal histories and experiences of discrimination. “Equally, the demand that educators should control conversations to avoid discomfort might prevent in-depth treatment of broader, structural inequalities that go beyond individual prejudice,” Dr Conradie said. A second stream of research speaks to media representations and cultural capital in advertising discourse. A key example examines the way art from European and American origins are used to imbue commercial brands with connotations of excellence and exclusivity, while references to Africa serve to invoke colonial images of unspoiled landscapes.

A hope to inspire further research
Dr Conradie is hopeful that fellow academics will refine and/or alter the methods he employed, and that they will expand, reinterpret, and challenge his findings with increasing relevance to contemporary concerns, such as the drive towards decolonisation. “When I initially launched the research project (with significant aid from highly accomplished co-authors), the catalogue of existing scholarly works lacked investigations along the particular avenues I aimed to address.”

Dr Conradie said that his future research projects will be shaped by the scholarly and wider social influences he looks to as signposts and from which he hopes to gain guidelines about specific issues in the South African society to which he can make a fruitful contribution.

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