By Lebogang Seale
They are promised a better life in South Africa, but instead they are kidnapped, branded and sold into sexual slavery for as little as R380.
Women and children, some as young as 13, are falling prey to syndicates operating in Mozambique and Swaziland, trafficking and smuggling them to South Africa on an unprecedented scale.
According to a report from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), at least 1 000 Mozambicans are smuggled into South Africa monthly at a price of about R1 000 each.
Margie de Monchy, the United Nations Children's Fund's child protection adviser, said South African cities, especially Johannesburg, were often used as a marketplace by human traffickers and were also targeted by international syndicates to smuggle girls out of South Africa to Asia and Europe.
Slave traders use the country's cities as a transit point to Europe. Often, rural children who are taken advantage of are offered the chance of an education or a better life.
They are then told that they need to pay large amounts of money to buy their freedom, which they never get, and are then forced into labour or the sex industry, De Monchy said.
Due to the absence of legislation and allegations of police complicity with the traffickers, the South African Police Service is battling to stop the rampant human smuggling.
The IOM says human trafficking is one of the world's most lucrative trades, surpassed only by drug and gun trafficking, and estimates the industry nets organised-crime gangs about R50-billion a year.
An investigation by The Star has revealed cases of syndicates abducting or luring girls as young as eight from their homes to South Africa.
The Mareyane (traffickers), as the syndicates are known along the border areas, operate by pretending to be acquaintances or relatives of the innocent girls and luring them from their homes to Johannesburg.
The victims end up in brothels in, among other places, Hillbrow and Yeoville, where they are used as prostitutes or in porn videos shown on the Internet. Some are sold as sex slaves or for hard labour.
The syndicates also abduct women without passports en route to South Africa.
In both cases, the victims are taken to awaiting transport at the border gates, which include minibus taxis, trucks and private vehicles, before being transported to Johannesburg.
Often, victims are kept in transit houses along the borders. As part of an initiation ritual, some are believed to be sexually assaulted by the traffickers.
Those who are taken to Johannesburg are sold in brothels for up to R1 000. Girls sold to brothels near the border are sold for as little as R380.
According to the IOM report, some of the girls are branded or tattooed by their brothel owners as identification.
When The Star visited two brothels in Komatipoort, girls as young as 13 were milling about inside two nightclubs, drinking alcohol in the company of older men. Often, some would move into back rooms with clients.
About 50km away in Malelane, at the Amazing Grace Children Centre (AGCC) in Mpumalanga, Mihloti*, 12, revealed how a woman pretending to be her aunt abducted her from her home in Swaziland.
"I was alone at home when she came. She asked my name and said she was my aunt. She said 'Come, let's go to my house'. I refused, but she threatened to kill me," Mihloti recalled.
She said the woman took her to Barberton, where she forced her to do household chores and hard labour.
Mihloti added that she was repeatedly raped during her second year of captivity.
"While the woman was away at work, a man came to the house and raped me. I ran away and met a woman, who brought me here," she said.
Another child at the centre, Hluphekani*, 9, said she was also abducted by an unknown woman from her home in Maputo in February this year.
She was on her way to buy bread when a woman said she must come with her. The young girl could not recall any further details of her abduction.
Vusi Ndukuya, an anti-trafficking officer at the AGCC, said child trafficking was rife in the region, with an average of five rescued children being brought to the centre every week, while more than 100 Mozambican and Swazi children were trafficked along the Maputo-Johannesburg corridor every month.
- * Not their real names.