Street kids sell favours to homosexual men at Graaff's Pool , say residents
By Manika Naidoo
The sign at the entrance to Graaff's Pool off Sea Point's famous promenade bans sleeping, dogs and alcohol. Once it also banned women and boys under 16.
Today, just about anything goes behind the "wall of shame" that once screened nude male sunbathers.
The fort-like concrete wall hides a seedy industry - street kids selling sex to gay men.
It is a dangerous and illegal trade that is forcing the Cape Town city council to consider demolishing the old wall.
It has been decades since well-heeled business and professional men gathered to sunbathe naked in the heat radiating off the whitewashed concrete floor and wall and cool off in the icy water of the natural rock tidal pool.
Graaff's Pool, or The Wall, as it is known in the homosexual community, has been a popular gay beat for locals and tourists for at least 15 years.
A quick internet search finds Graaff's pool listed as a popular destination on gay web sites.
TravelOut recommends caution when cruising Sea Point, saying "depending upon your modesty, you might also want to spend time at another idiosyncratic local institution, Graaf's (sic) Pool, an all-male nudist pool on Beach Road in Sea Point".
But since the Cape Town city council declared the pool a unisex facility about a year ago, the scene has changed dramatically.
Few men come to swim. Nor do any women, despite the lifting of the age-old ban.
Instead, Graaff's Pool has a become a favourite haunt for paedophiles preying on destitute street kids.
The only women who walk down the long-path connecting the pool to the beach-front are curious strangers, like Elizabeth Mabokela and Mantsae Seemane from Pretoria, who took a brief detour on an early morning walk along the promenade this week.
"We were just walking by and wondered what was happening here," Mabokela said.
As they entered the enclosed area, a well-dressed man rushed past, followed by a group of adolescent boys.
"They really looked at us very strangely," Mabokela said.
Later, a man called "William" with a towel draped over his shoulders arrived. "This place is for men only," he said. "It used to be a place for sun-tanning and now it is gay. You never see women here. It would be much better if they knocked down the wall."
Brian Berkman, a long-term Sea Point resident and member of the local residents' and ratepayers' association, said he had stopped swimming at the pool last year.
"The last time I went there, it didn't feel like a safe place to swim, so I haven't been back."
He said lifting the ban on women swimmers had scared off men who enjoyed sunbathing naked. Now the "sleaze factor" had taken over.
"There always was an element of gay prostitutes hanging around but there were always more people who were there for sun-tanning than people who weren't. Perhaps now the balance is different."
Berkman said one way the community could reclaim the pool was to knock down the wall.
"I think that if there is a sense that it needs to be a full open space for men or women, the wall needs to come down."
Last year, the council declared the pool unisex, fearing the ban on women was unconstitutional.
During fierce community debate about the proposed change, some called for the walls to be bulldozed; others argued that "The Wall" was "a sacred place in the secular history of gay men" and that calls for its demolition masked homophobia.
City councillor JP Smith said it was "fairly obvious" that the pool had become a pick-up spot.
"One wants to avoid a homophobic response, but child prostitution and paedophilia are very worrying.
"We are going to investigate the option of demolishing it. The change in its usage has made it dangerous and undesirable."
Smith said this could be the last season for the Graaff's Pool wall.
"People have a sentimental attachment to it but I doubt there will be much opposition to its demolition."
He said only a few residents had complained.
Berkman said people were more concerned about what they could see in Sea Point than what they could not.
Many of the early-morning joggers along the promenade seemed content to ignore the child prostitution behind the beach wall and look the other way.
"As long as they leave my son alone," said one women before running on.