Cape Town - The Asijiki Coalition, a group of sex work-supporting organisations and movements, has demanded that the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development provide a timeline for when it would finalise its decriminalisation of sex work Bill and present it to Parliament.
The coalition’s demand follows the discovery of the bodies of six women in Central Johannesburg earlier this month, believed to be sex workers who had been reported missing since late June.
The coalition is also calling for the urgent passing of the Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill into law which it said provided specifically for hate crimes against sex workers.
The purpose of the Bill is to provide for the offences of hate crime and hate speech, and the prosecution of people who commit those offences.
The coalition’s co-ordinator, Constance Mathe, said with high levels of gender-based violence in South Africa and daily reports of murders, rapes and abuse, and the murder of sex workers had received disproportionate public attention.
Mathe said members of the public had used the recent incident as an opportunity to express their horror at the way sex workers were treated and had called for the urgent reform of the law that criminalised sex work.
She said in February the coalition drafted the sex work Bill and submitted it to the minister which was followed by consultations in March.
“While the Asijiki Coalition welcomes the overwhelming public outcry against the violence and how outdated laws make sex workers vulnerable, it deeply regrets the circumstances that have led to the focus on sex work.
“Asijiki mourns the deaths of the six women with their friends, family, and broader sex worker community. I wish we could state that these brutal murders of sex workers are unusual. It is not.
“The sex worker community mourns the deaths of colleagues on a too regular basis. The criminal law has to fall,” she said.
Speaking at the Convening of the Global Campaign to Decriminalise Poverty and Status held at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study last month, Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development John Jeffery said it was the sex workers who were suffering by being fined or being harassed by police, while their clients and the pimps did not face the same treatment.
The department’s spokesperson, Chrispin Phiri, said the department had developed a draft Bill (Sex Work) for consideration by the ministry, which was expected to be published, with Cabinet approval, in December.