Theresa Taylor
HER WIDE brown eyes are a wall, hiding her emotions.
Valisher (not her real name) gets hassled when she goes to the shops and is blamed for the spread of HIV. Sometimes police spray her genitals with pepper spray when they search her. Strangers call her names.
“They judge us, but they don’t ask ‘why are you doing this?’” she says.
Selling sex has been 31-year-old Valisher’s only source of income since she was a teenager.
Born to a Zimbabwean mother and a Xhosa father in Joburg, she spent her childhood in Zimbabwe with her grandmother.
Her face contorts slightly. “When I returned to (South Africa) I was alone,” she says.
Fifteen-year-old Valisher discovered that both her parents had died.
Uneducated and unable to make money, she turned to sex work in the place where “anything can happen, anytime, anywhere, to anyone” – Hillbrow.
Sixteen years later, she has two children – in Grade 7 and Grade 8 – to support.
She is outwardly confident of her decisions, but her eyes moisten when she thinks about her children finding out how she pays the rent.
“Most of us work on the streets because we want our children to go to school. We want a better life for them,” she says. “We don’t want them to end up like us.”
Most of the sex workers Valisher knows ended up selling sex after a boyfriend abandoned them.
“Most of the women are taking care of their kids, but we didn’t make them alone,” she says with a raised eyebrow.
Ironically, she is scornful towards women who call themselves “housewives” and are supported by their men. “You are selling yourself if he is buying you food in exchange for sex,” she says. “They are they same as us, except that what they are doing in their houses, we are doing in the streets and hotels.”
Valisher searches for the right phrase to describe these women.
“Sex workers in denial,” she says, her face caught between a laugh and a frown.
Her job has a more honest exchange. In a strange way, she is independent of men. “These are our bodies. We have the right to use them anyhow, as long as we protect them. No one has the right to judge.”
But there are always a lot of people around doing the judging. Particularly other women.
Sometimes policemen harass sex workers and take their money, or force them to provide sexual favours. But it is often women police officers who give sex workers the hardest time.
“When you want to talk they will not talk to you, and then they search you in the street and spray you with pepper spray on your private parts,” she says.
“Women say you are taking their husbands,” says Valisher. A mocking grin flashes onto her face, “But I have never heard of a sex worker knocking on a client’s door,” she says.
And as long as Valisher has responsibilities, bills and school fees to pay, she won’t quit sex work. “Who is going to employ me?” she asks.
In her mind, sex work is as simple as a shop, where there is buying and selling.
“At least you can’t get retrenched from this job,” she says with a grin.
For Valisher, decriminalisation of sex work could provide some safety and put a stop to constant police harassment.
“If you go into a shop to open an account and tell them you are a sex worker, they laugh at you,” she says.
“If sex work was decriminalised, we would be treated with respect just like any other profession – like doctors or teachers.”
Valisher puts her coat back on and makes for the door.
She is on her way to church.