Cape Town - Sex workers and transwomxn have called on the government to not only remember them during the launch of HIV/Aids campaigns, as a key demographic, but also when discussions are held about women subjected to gender-based violence.
In the second report of the “Say Her Name” campaign launched on Thursday, by the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Task-force in partnership with Sisonke Sex Worker Movement, the number of murdered and abused sex workers was
highlighted.
This followed announcements by ministers Patricia de Lille (Public Works) and Lindiwe Zulu (Social Development) at a press conference in Parliament, that several government buildings would be made available to victims of gender-based violence across the country.
The report also notes that marginalised groups often struggled to get the government, both national and provincial, to acknowledge that sex workers were also subjected to and victims of gender-based violence.
Sweat group rights officer Nosipho Vidima said: “101 sex workers’ deaths were recorded between the years of 2018 and 2019, and 45% of them were due to murder and brutal violence, a third of that to intimate partner violence.”
Commission for Gender Equality provincial manager Sixolile Ngcobo said: “The decriminalising of sex work is important, because sex workers are vulnerable in their places of work, it is in these criminal elements that they fall prey to abusers and violent murders, the government needs to be consistent in its efforts to assist women in South Africa, and
transwomxn and female sex workers should also be included in those efforts.”
Chriscy Blouws, attorney at the Women’s Legal Centre, said in the Western Cape women who lived in unfavourable geographical areas received the lesser, undesirable services compared to those who lived in the province’s more prominent areas.
Blouws said: “What the government does not realise, is that women living in these areas, among them sex workers, are in the direct line of gender-based violence. They often become victims, they are in much more need of proper health services and protection.”
Two weeks ago, in Durban, the body of 24-year-old sex worker Sumaya Raylene Hoosen was found in a Chatsworth park, after she was last seen getting into a car.
“We understand that she was driven into prostitution in order to survive. We are always constantly under attack as prostituted women,” said Siphindile Cele, leader of the KwaZulu-Natal Kwanele Survivor Movement.
“If selling sex was widely viewed as a job like any other or a necessary service, this situation of killing women would never happen,” she said.
The group which advocates for the Abolitionist Equality Law, is calling on the government to urgently engage with and attend to the grave issues plaguing sex workers.