South Africa

Thai police are looking for an ethnic Chinese man and his accomplices who lured local women to South Africa and forced them into sex slavery. A police spokesman told Reuters at least seven Thai women had complained they had been offered jobs in South Africa as dancers or hostesses in night clubs but when they arrived found they were required to serve as unpaid prostituted women. The women said they were tricked into paying the gang a "commission" for their tickets, work permits and employment before they left Thailand. In South Africa they were forced to work day and night, they said. "Some of them have already returned home and some are in the process of repatriation," said the police spokesman. He said the operation appeared to be part of a well-organized business sending Thai women and girls to Africa but did not say how the women had managed to escape. ("Thai women lured to South Africa as sex slaves," Reuters, 24 August 1998)

South Africa is a transit zone for international child pornography and prostitution. (Merab Kirmire, End Child Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking (ECPAT), August 7, 1998, Sapa African National Congress)

Case

In 1996, police arrested a mentally ill man, responsible for the deaths of 17 prostitutes who were found strangled in the Western Cape Peninsula. (AFP, 5 December 1997)

Policy and Law

In April 1998, the South African Human Rights Commission said it would ask Parliament to prioritize the amendment of a law to prevent the easy circulation of child pornography on the Internet. ("Child Pornography on Internet Should be Amended," Sapa, 30 April 1998)

South Africa has appointed a task team to protect children against pornography and to develop legislation that will place the country on a par with the international community." (Sisula Outlines Latest Child Pornography Legislation," 7 July 1998)

New legislation is in effect in South Africa making importation, production, possession and distribution of child pornography on the Internet an offense. ("Law to Control Child Porn in Force from Monday," Sapa, 31 May 1998)

The 1996 Films and Publications Act makes the importation, production, possession and distribution of child pornography an offence. (Sisula Outlines Latest Child Pornography Legislation," 7 July 1998)

The number of violent crimes against women and children has risen dramatically since the ANC came into power in 1994, says National Party. The number of rapes in South Africa had increased by 23% since 1996.

• In 1994, 42,429 rape cases were reported, while 52,160 cases were reported in 1997.
• There were 105.3 rapes per 100,000 people in 1994, by 1997, the figure was 120.6 per 100,000.
• In 1994, 3,874 cases of indecent assault were reported, in 1997, the figure rose to 5,053.

The report only provided the figures of reported cases. The introduction to the "National Policy Guidelines for Victims of Sexual Offences" said less than one third of reported rape cases reached the courts. Only 16% of reported rape cases resulted in convictions. ("More Rapes ‘Since ANC came to power’", HURINet - The Human Rights Information Network)

During the first three months of 1998, 5,214 South African girls under 18 were reported raped, keeping pace with 1997’s record of 21,404. (Dean E. Murphy, "Africa’s Silent Shame," Los Angeles Times, 16 August 1998)

Health officials in South Africa say adolescent girls are twice as likely to become infected with HIV as boys, a reflection of increased sexual activity, often unwilling, with older men. Mamelato Leopeng, an AIDS counselor at the Esselen Street Health Center in Johannesburg, said about one-third of the HIV-infected men she encounters have bought into the belief that sex with a virgin will cure them, and they are further convinced that the needed "dose of purity" is rendered ineffective with a condom. (Dean E. Murphy, "Africa’s Silent Shame," Los Angeles Times, 16 August 1998)

The desire to "get back at women" is the most common reaction among men when they are first told they are HIV-positive, says Mamelato Leopeng, an AIDS counselor at the Esselen Street Health Center in Johannesburg, says. HIV-infected men have even targeted young girls as an act of vengeance. In a case reported by South African police in May 1998, members of a gang of unemployed men in Soweto were allegedly raping schoolgirls, telling their victims that they were HIV-infected and didn't want to die alone. (Dean E. Murphy, "Africa’s Silent Shame," Los Angeles Times, 16 August 1998)