Izwi Lethu: Our Voices Newsletter Issue #5 Aug. 2015

IZWI LETHU: OUR VOICE

Issue 5

Izwi Lethu: Our Voice

August 2015

A NEWSLETTER BY SEX WORKERS FOR SEX WORKERS

Editor’s Note

by Tanaka, Editor-­‐in-­‐Chief

Dear Readers.

It is with much sadness to learn that there isn’t just harassment of sex workers by members of the South African Police Services (SAPS) but unnecessary brutality. Most of the time sex workers suffer in silence and think they deserve it because they have been made to believe so. I fail to understand how SAPS feel the need to focus on non-­‐ violent crimes with so much zeal and yet respond to violent crimes in a relaxed manner. For instance, if you call them in the event of a robbery, they would probably arrive after someone has become a casualty and the perpetrators are long gone; what’s worse, in many cases nothing gets done afterwards.

Then you find out how they respond to “prostitution”. Conducting Izwi Lethu workshops in Pretoria, I was in shock that our beloved SAPS use guns on sex workers. One incident that rubbed me the wrong way: there are mounted police officers who often visit a particular site in Gauteng and use horses to trample sex workers. For more details, please turn to page 6.

Yours truly, Tanaka

A Poem For African Women in Women’s Month

by Sellinah, Feature Writer

IN THIS ISSUE

Photos from Pretoria and Musina

Featured in this issue are photos from Pretoria, Kenya, and Musina. Follow MoVE on Twitter and Instagram (@MoVESAfrica) and on Tumblr (methodsvisualexplore.tumblr.com) for more.

I am an African Woman, yes proudly so A pillar of strength A woman with Ubuntu I have African blood flowing in my veins A woman is why we are here They are the strongest people we can ever think of They can carry an unborn child for nine months in their womb and They can carry a born child for more than nine months on their back Yet they are not given love, respect, and support.

And here is a woman thinking of how she is going to raise her kids since they are fatherless That’s when sex working comes in It is not everyone who works for drugs, friends, and fun People are doctors, teachers, and all those good careers because of that money, that R50 per client Sometimes some clients don’t have that R50 and they make it R40 or R35 We still accept it because it is better that nothing. (continued on page 2)

Masthead

Editor-­‐in-­‐Chief: Tanaka

Managing Editor: Greta

Contributing Editor: Linda Feature Writer: Mpilo

Feature Writer: Sellinah

Feature Writer: Namhla

Izwi Lethu is a collaboration between Sisonke and ACMS’s M oVE Project,

funded by the Open Society

Foundation methodsvisualexplore@gmail.com

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(continued from page 1) It is so painful to be a sex worker To sleep with more than ten men in an hour, day and night To be abused by clients, the stigma around us.

That’s why I call myself a strong African woman Especially in the woman’s month.

You can think of a house without woman, Will that be a home sweet home?

We have to think about our transport to earth Because we did not fall from the airplane.

My grandma calls me Ndodakazi (daughter) my nephew calls me Anti and my son calls me Mama and the people I am close to like my friends and other girls I work with in sex work they call me Sister, Chomi, or Myf. I don’t care about that. When clients want my service they will call me Lala, Sweetheart, or Sweetie Pie, but when they see me in public places like the taxi rank, shopping mall, hospital, or anywhere in public, they call, “How much, Magosha?” Even those who are not my clients will shout, “Ngyeza lapho imalini namhlanje” (I am coming there, how much today?). “Sweetheart, your pussy is very nice.” The public will start to stare at me and say, “Wow, that sfebe [bitch] with no future. But why are you selling your body?” I will feel so angry and ashamed. I also feel bad for them at the same time because they don’t understand sex work. Their husbands, in-­‐laws, or kids are safe with me. We only do business. I thought, what would they do if I am the one who shouts at my clients if we accidentally meet at the shopping mall when they are with their wives and kids, which I don’t do because I know we are not friends or lovers. It’s just business. They must also remember that I don’t go to someone’s door and ask for clients. They

are the ones who come to me. When I walk on the street I dress nicely like any other women on the street so why call me names?

9 August

by Namhla, Feature Writer National Women’s Day is a South African public holiday celebrated on the 9th of August annually. The day commemorates the 1956 march of around 20 000 women to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against the country’s pass laws. The march was led by strong women like Lilian Ngoyi, Hellen Joseph, and Adelaide Tambo.

Now in Pretoria, we have streets named after these women to show how much they mean to the country. The people of South Africa must wake up and empower the women of today and encourage them to go forward leading this beautiful country because they are our pillars. This day must be celebrated every day, not only in August. I say let’s go out and help the needy people, clean

at the old age houses, and help the young girls in their day-­‐to-­‐day challenges that they come across. Let’s stop the tendency of drinking alcohol on this special day and do something for others.

South Africa, what more can be done to give our young ones the future they deserve? Who will empower us if we don’t step up for ourselves?

by Mpilo, Feature Writer

Who Am I

My Deepest Secret

by Sellinah, Feature Writer

When I was a teenager, I had 2 friends named Kgomotso and Dudu. I loved and believed in them. We used to do most things together. One day, a man driving a maroon car with his friends called me and asked me out for drinks. I was happy. I called my friends to come along with me. We went to a place called Savoy in Mpumalanga. They bought us drinks and food. Then they wanted us to go with them. Unfortunately, my two friends were older than me and knew more. They left their drinks as if they were going to the loo, but they did not come back. After I realised that they

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were not coming back, I took their 2 bottles of Reds Dry and went outside.

That’s when the guys realised that I was running away and followed me. They saw where I was hiding under the bridge.

They yelled at me. I came out because I was taking alcohol for the first time that night. They took me to a place called Liberty in their car. The one man had mercy on me, but the driver was like Lucifer. I told him that I had never had sex in my life. He still did not understand. He pointed a gun at me and said that if I try anything stupid again he will shoot me. I was scared. I told myself: let me do anything he wants and maybe I can be safe. He raped me. He took my virginity that I had kept for so long, and he dumped me on the street. It was so painful to me. I cried and cried for a long time. This scene has never stopped coming in my mind until today, and I have never told anyone about this story before.

Photos by Linda

MoVE Workshop in Limpopo

by Linda, Contributing Editor th

I arrived in Limpopo on the 24 of August to cover a workshop for Izwi Lethu. When l arrived it was in the afternoon and there was a creative space workshop for about 40, Musina Sisonke members. Since it was Women’s Month they were talking about women in particular. They talked about “What is your role as a woman”.

I saw Kgomotso and Dudu the following week because since that Saturday night I had locked myself in the house for people not to see me and for me not to see people. They asked how did it go, and I lied to them that I managed to escape. Dudu said, “You had to because those guys looked so dangerous with scars on their faces, and they also had a gun.” I hated that they didn’t tell me that the guys had a gun and that they decided to run away. I was going to be safe. And besides I did not even know the tricky part of running away from men who spend money on drinks for me.

My family never head about this sad story until today.

After discussing this, they performed a play about the role of a woman even if she is a sex worker. They grouped themselves in four groups. The second group’s play was about “How do we foresee women in the next five years’’.

The third act was entitled, “Is your role still considered if you are a sex worker?’’

The last group performed on “How do we encourage sex workers to behave in this industry’’. When the creative space workshop came to an end, we were left with 11 people who were attending the workshop. We talked about challenges that they were facing in Limpopo as sex workers. After that, everyone was given a task of writing a story of something that happened to them or to someone

they know. We continued with the story th writing until the 25 of August. We then polished our stories and discussed to see if they could be published in our Izwi Lethu newsletter for a special Limpopo issue. Izwi Lethu is a newsletter written by sex workers for sex workers, but anyone can read it. Izwi Lethu is about what you have experienced or what happens in the sex business.

On the third day of the workshop, we were revising our stories and typing them on the computer. The last day of th the workshop was on the 27 . We started by reading our stories from the computer and then got comments from other participants. We revised our stories one last time. I interviewed everyone who was at the workshop and discovered that most of them were having different problems. The gays and lesbians had been chased away from their homes by their parents and the

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police were arresting them on the streets. Some of the participants were migrant sex workers and one of them had her passport blacklisted when she was arrested. I took a few photos from Musina that are featured in this newsletter.

The Way I Started

Nevertheless, I gathered the courage and told myself, ”Tanaka, if you are meant to die, even in the comfort of your own home, you can just kick the bucket!” Besides, there was no way I was going to let fear get in the way of such a great opportunity.

I made all the preparations for my travel, from getting vaccinations to gathering all the travel information that I required.

We were a group of six Sisonke members from South Africa attending the Academy and there were other participants from Burundi and the host country, Kenya. The highlight of my travel was that the President of the U.S. was also visiting Kenya at the same time. The traffic jam at the airport and surrounding areas was more ridiculous than usual and also most networks of communication were down.

Are you wondering what SWAA is? Well, it is the Sex Workers Academy Africa, which aims at building capacity of sex workers of all genders across Africa to advocate for and implement rights-­‐ based HIV programmes. This enables sex workers to spearhead their own programs and create an environment where peer-­‐to-­‐peer learning is possible through sharing experiences, knowledge, and expertise. The SWAA curriculum covers human rights, policies and the effects they have, condom programming, outreach, community empowerment, violence, and art & performance advocacy.

I was girl from a village in KwaZulu-­‐Natal when I thought of running away from home. I ran from home because my grandmother was abusing me by making me do all the household stuff and beating me. She told me she is doing all this because she wants to make me a strong African woman. I ran away not even knowing where I was going, and I woke up in Johannesburg. I became a babysitter for shelter and food. I found so many boyfriends as every girl in Johannesburg did. I enjoyed the city life.

We girls were only having fun with boys, spending the night. In the morning he would give you R10 for transport, that’s it. I did not mind since I had a place to stay. I got pregnant, and all my boy friends dumped me. So there I was pregnant and alone. The baby was delivered, and I did not have anything. I started selling fruits on the street, but the money was not enough. It was hell.

That’s where Sizakele, a woman from next door, interfered and introduced me to sex work. When she started telling me about sex work, I was shocked. When you looked at her, she looked innocent.

You could not tell she was a sex worker.

by Mpilo, Feature Writer

It took me almost two months to accept because I heard bad things people were saying about sex workers. It was like they are a disgrace and dangerous people. I thought about it and my baby too. The way we were suffering, I did not care what others would say or think of me anymore since no one was willing to help me. My first time on the street wearing a mini skirt was like hell. Then came my first client. It was not that bad.

My friend taught me what to do with clients, like start by asking for money first and how to put on a condom, so my discomfort with sex work was gone. As I am now a sex worker, money is rolling in. I started noticing how poor my family was. First I started by going back home and asking my grandmother to forgive me for running away. I realized she meant well. I lied and told her I was working as a waitress, so I started to send money home. Now I am the breadwinner for my family.

Photos by Tanaka

SWA Academy

by Tanaka, Editor-­‐in-­‐Chief

When I first heard of the Academy and its training being held in Nairobi, Kenya, I wasn’t keen on attending. To be very honest, with a series of Al Shabaab attacks in the country, I wasn’t sure of my safety and I was afraid for my life.

I loved the whole process of the training, including the facilitation, site visits, and debrief sessions. Most people are under the impression that sex workers are uneducated people who can only lie on their backs. The SWAA is a myth breaker and proof that there are well informed sex workers in Africa. The faculty, which is comprised mostly of sex workers, delivered the modules effortlessly and left us yearning for more. In some trainings I have attended before, people got sleepy and bored. However, the Kenyan team had tons of “energizers” and they knew when and how to unpack them.

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“When facilitating in any workshop, the trick is not in speaking well alone. Being able to draw attention towards oneself and engaging your audience is an important skill.” These were the words of one of the facilitators, who had lovely dreadlocks, which looked almost like mine. Now I have adopted the same theory and have learnt to be a better facilitator.

events, you can still look out for employment opportunities that do come around, which will enable you to give back to the movement and still be connected to the movement.

Kenya is a very beautiful African country, also known as “The Pride of Africa”. It is diverse in culture and the Kenyan cuisine is divine. I enjoyed the chapati (unleavened flatbread), which is like the Indian roti. I often filled it with goat stew and added their very hot pilipili (chillies), which gave an explosion on the tongue. I also fell in love with the Massai cultural attire, which involves a lot of beading and red fabric. They make very beautiful sandals too. I had a very beautiful stay in Kenya, though the saddest part is I never got to see the prestigious Mount Kilimanjaro.

A friend of mine was repeatedly raped by a certain police. He would just come anytime where she works and take her against her will. She is now so scared to go out. Because he is a police officer she is also afraid to go and lay charges. What can she do to get back to work?

by Dear Mastoep Dear Mastoep, Is it possible for sex workers to attend Sisonke programmes even if they are retired from sex work because of marriage reasons?

Dear Retired Sex Workers, If you have left the industry and are now married, I think attending Sisonke events might not be the best thing for you. Sisonke is a movement for sex workers by sex workers and you don’t want to risk being outed especially if your partner doesn’t know you were in the business. The other thing is that most of the issues covered are issues affecting sex workers and as someone who has left the industry, these are issues you won’t have anymore.

Although you are not able to attend

Regards, Mastoep

Dear MaStoep,

Ask Dear Mastoep

Regards, Mastoep

a different area especially if she is fearful so that she limits the chances of running into him. But even if she doesn’t want to lay a charge I would still encourage her to speak to someone about the trauma that she has experienced.

Dear Concerned Friend, Firstly, people need more friends like you. Secondly, your friend needs to get assistance for a number of things. The first is counselling for the trauma that she has experienced through the rape and fearing for her life because her abuser is a police officer. The fact that she is now not able to work means that not only has he violated her body, he is now affecting her ability to work and provide for herself and those who depend on her income.

I do understand that she is scared because of his job, but I would ask if you can encourage her to come forward and lay a charge against him. I know that it is not easy but there are ways to support her if she wants to do this, and I am not saying it will be easy. Laying a charge of rape against anyone is hard and even hard when the person can trace you and further intimidate you, but there are times when we need to be strong. The good thing is that there are a number of organisations like Sisonke, SWEAT, WLC and others who can support her during this time. She must also remember that he is probably doing this because he thinks that because she is a sex worker and he is a police officer that she will do nothing about it so he can continue to harass her.

In terms of working, if she feels that she still wants to go back to work now she can but it will mean her going to work in

The Bush

by Tanaka, Editor-­‐in-­‐Chief

A few minutes drive outside the Pretoria CBD, there is a bush that is famous for drug dealers, illegal gamblers, and sex workers. It is an open veld that is situated close to many Pretoria West amenities and affectionately known as “The Bush”.

Allegedly, the police, including the Tshwane Metropolitan Police Department (TMPD), extort money from the gamblers and drug dealers. As for

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I as a Sisonke member and other representatives from the Women’s Legal Centre (WLC), SWEAT, and the WRHI, who provide health care services in that area, visited “The Bush” recently. The veld was not as green as it normally gets in summer and therefore didn’t create as much hiding space. I asked one of the women where they carried out the work in such a situation when the gruesome South African winter had almost withered everything away. She showed me some shacks that were made of a plastic, situated some few metres away from the meeting point.

The main reason for our visit as Sisonke, SWEAT, and WLC was to encourage some of the girls who had been arrested and charged with “Attempting to do an Act of Prostitution” to attend court and reassure them that we were there to give them support. There was no solid proof to support the accusation. There are also unbelievable municipal By-­‐Laws being used to charge the women, like

“Disturbing the flow of traffic”, which makes me wonder where would traffic flow in the bush.

If there weren’t any charge sheets from the police in some women’s possession, I would have thought it was a joke, but it wasn’t. Another girl had some pictures of mounted police on one of their visits to the bush. At first I thought it was just for intimidation, until it was brought to my attention that they trample on sex workers with the horses. A few days after our visit, the police shot at the women using rubber bullets and about three of them were injured.

Sellinah: I am going to ask you some questions and take your picture, if that is ok with you?

When confronted by some of the team members that I had visited the site with earlier that week, the station commander responsible initially tried to deny the incident. When he got cornered, that is only when he admitted and then called for medical assistance for the injured women.

Lerato: Yes, as long you don’t take my face it’s ok with me Sellinah: How safe is the place called Bush?

Lerato: The place is not safe at all because these kind [of] people who are breaking the laws, like drug dealers, people who do gambling.

How long do we have to put up with this? If our supposed protectors violate our rights, whom do we turn to? Aren’t human rights for everyone? Aren’t sex workers human too?

Sellinah: But do police come and monitor the place?

Lerato: Yes, they do come although they do not arrest the dealers and the gamblers. They harass us.

our lovely sisters, they get the beating and all other forms of harassment, all because they do not bribe as much as the other “criminals” within the vicinity.

This is because these girls do not charge their clients as much as our average women in affluent areas. The setup of “The Bush” doesn’t really attract as many fat cats. The regular clients are gardeners and taxi drivers.

Sellinah: You said harass, in which way?

An Interview about the Bush

by Sellinah, Feature W riter

I went to the place called the Bush, which is outside of Pretoria near a market, a railway line, and a river, to interview a sex worker by the name Lerato. She is 26 years of age, and she has been working in the bush for six months now. She started working in the Bush in February this year. She was introduced to the Bush by a friend.

Before that she was working by appointment all the time, which was moving very slowly. Then she decided to follow her friend to the Bush

Lerato: The police will come almost every day and beat us, take our money, and ask us to give them blowjob. They will also charge us of wrong things like disturbing the flow of traffic where there is no car that can pass through the river.

Sellinah: In closing, is the anything you want to say?

Lerato: I hate the police, metro and our government because they do nothing about the issue in the Bush.

I normally go to the Bush and meet with other sex workers who are witnessing the harassment that Lerato mentioned.

As a peer educator, I visit the Bush frequently and I also witness the harassment that the sex workers are complaining about.

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Guest Column: Sex in Our City

by Wayne Helfrich, Project M anager

at Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute

Sex Worker health and education services have finally come to Pretoria, not that it was an easy journey. In June 2014, the decision to extend and duplicate Wits RHI (Hillbrow) services in the Capital City (Tshwane) was made.

This started as an outreach to Sex Workers that included HCT, referrals to clinics and health education talks. The perception was “Another new organization with big promises”, and so we were not accepted with the enthusiasm that we had anticipated.

In October of the same year Sediba Hope Medical Centre (a Public-­‐Private Partnership medical facility) was approached as a possible venue to deliver holistic health services to any client encountered during outreach. A professional nurse, 2 community health workers, project manager, team leader, and 10 peer educators (motivators) were employed for this daunting task.

Sensitization training (in collaboration with SWEAT) was offered at City of Tshwane and Department of Health clinical facilities to ensure that anybody referred to a health facility would be treated with the respect, care, and understanding that they deserve.

Our mobile clinic arrived the beginning of August, and this has enabled us to perform even more services within the community.

Apart from the “Sistas” not trusting the new organization, we also had to contend with police harassment and “political intervention” around every

There have been 43 hot spots have been identified, 27 currently being serviced (bush, brothel, tavern, street based) within the inner-­‐city and close surrounding areas.

The next challenge was medication supply and pathology services to be obtained from Department of Health, which was accomplished in June 2015.

Any functioning project needs to rely on strong partnerships and those that we have include: COPC (Community Oriented Primary Care) with the University of Pretoria, Regional Health Management Team, CBD Health Forum, UP family medicine, OUT MSM (Men who have sex with men), and PWID (People who inject drugs), and the City of Tshwane Religious desk.

Fourteen pastors have been sensitized with regard to sex workers and have started referral structures within their churches to and from our clinic. There is also a religious leader on call to assist any sex workers referred by our project.

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corner. Ward counsellors were making it their weekend mission to raid brothels in the city to “name and shame” sex workers and their clients and police were following outreach workers to harass the sex workers after our departure.

A meeting was held with the ward counsellor and a presentation was given at a legislature meeting with a verbal agreement of support being given. To date, the weekend mission has changed to giving information about the clinic to sex workers in the city.

After some harrowing encounters with the police, a meeting with some station commanders was held and the police strategy has changed from humiliation and harassment of sex workers to advisory and support for sex workers.

Police officers are bringing sex workers to the mobile clinic and returning them to their place of work after they have been assisted.

The photographs for this story were taken by Pretoria Peer Educators and Project Team.