To Live Freely in This World

Sex Worker Activism in Africa

Chi Adanna Mgbako

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781479813933
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Human Sexuality in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Sex worker activists throughout Africa are demanding an end to the criminalization of sex work and the recognition of their human rights to safe working conditions, health and justice services, and lives free from violence and discrimination. To Live Freely in This World is the first book to tell the story of the brave activists at the beating heart of the sex workers’ rights movement in Africa—the newest and most vibrant face of the global sex workers’ rights struggle. African sex worker activists are proving that communities facing human rights abuses are not bereft of agency. They’re challenging politicians, religious fundamentalists, and anti-prostitution advocates; confronting the multiple stigmas that affect the diverse members of their communities; engaging in intersectional movement building with similarly marginalized groups; and participating in the larger global sex workers’ rights struggle in order to determine their social and political fate. By locating this counter-narrative in Africa, To Live Freely in This World challenges disempowering and one-dimensional depictions of “degraded Third World prostitutes” and helps fill what has been a gaping hole in feminist scholarship regarding sex work in the African context. Based on original fieldwork in seven African countries, including Botswana, Kenya, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda, Chi Adanna Mgbako draws on extensive interviews with over 160 African female and male (cisgender and transgender) sex worker activists, and weaves their voices and experiences into a fascinating, richly-detailed, and powerful examination of the history and continuing activism of this young movement.

1

“Our House’s Foundation”

Understanding Sex Work in Africa

When we reject the single story and realize there is never a single story . . . we regain a kind of paradise.

—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Duduzile (“Dudu”) Dlamini, a Zulu female sex worker, is small and round, with piercing, pretty eyes and a powerful energy. Eunice April, a Coloured and Xhosa transgender female sex worker, is tall and slender, with striking, sharp features and a quiet confidence. They share the same burning dedication to the health and human rights of their fellow sex workers. December nights in Cape Town, South Africa—which juts out into the Atlantic, hugging the southernmost western tip of the continent—can be surprisingly chilly, and on one such night, I’m chatting with Dudu and Eunice outside the airy meeting space of both the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT), a sex workers’ rights NGO, and Sisonke, the sex worker–led South African movement that’s one of the most active on the continent.1 They work for SWEAT and Sisonke’s comprehensive mobile outreach peer education program, which is truly a thing of beauty. Year-round—virtually every day and night—roving teams of outreach workers seek out sex workers on the streets and in bars, taverns, clubs, and brothels in Cape Town, providing them with free sexual health, general health, and human rights services. Tonight, I’m participating in one of their outreach sessions to street-based sex workers, a jaunt that will last deep into the cold, windy night.

Around 10 P.M., Dudu, Eunice, and I jump into a large white SWEAT/Sisonke “mobile wellness clinic” van, overflowing with supplies to hand out to the sex workers we’ll meet tonight: male and female condoms; personal lubricant, which helps prevent condom breakage; brochures about sexual health and hygiene; “know your rights” booklets, including ones focused on police abuse; and contact information for the SWEAT/Sisonke twenty-four-hour help hotline for sex workers in crisis. In the back of the medically equipped van is a small testing area where sex workers can receive free and confidential rapid fifteen-minute HIV tests, pap smears, and tuberculosis sputum and STI screenings.

Eunice April. Cape Town, South Africa. Photograph by author.

The rest of the outreach team joins us in the van, including Buyi, an HIV and tuberculosis counselor, and Tina, a nurse practitioner, as we head out into the blue-black night. Cape Town has a large Coloured population, so most of the sex workers we’ll come across tonight are Coloured female sex workers, cisgender and transgender, who’ve come into town from the impoverished outskirts of central Cape Town. The outreach workers know the areas where sex workers can be found, so we make our first stop on the main road of Cape Town’s southern suburb.

Dudu and Eunice spot two women standing on the corner, one of whom they know. We slow down, and Dudu hops out of the van to speak with them. Nelda is in her forties, wearing a long tiger-print bandana, and she’s thrilled to see Dudu. “Welcome to Cape Town!” she yells out to me over Dudu’s shoulder, her eyes bright, when she learns that I’m visiting from the States. “Would you like to do HIV testing tonight?” Dudu asks Nelda and Elizabeth, the second, younger sex worker standing next to her. “A nurse and counselor are in the wellness van and could give you a rapid fifteen-minute test. They could also do TB testing or STI screening if you’d like.”

Nelda proudly reports she’s recently been tested on-site at the SWEAT and Sisonke premises we’ve just arrived from, where weekly testing is provided to supplement the daily mobile outreach work. Elizabeth is visibly nervous at the thought of getting tested. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been tested,” she says, moving from side to side, an anxious smile creeping onto her face.

Dudu doesn’t pressure her—their program is firmly nonjudgmental and respectful of sex workers’ agency. “When you’re ready,” Dudu says gently, “it’s a good thing to keep in mind. Next Wednesday, we’ll be doing testing on-site at the SWEAT offices if you change your mind, okay? What about condoms or lube, do you need some?”

Both Nelda and Elizabeth eagerly walk over to the van with us to pick up armfuls of health supplies. They’re especially excited by the flavored condoms the outreach team has in stock tonight. And as Nelda grabs her supplies she tells us defiantly, “The cops rarely fuck with me anymore because I know my rights now that I’ve been going to Sisonke and SWEAT. I tell them that I feed my children! They don’t feed my children! This is the confidence I’ve gotten from SWEAT.” Because police abuse of sex workers in Cape Town is rampant, SWEAT and Sisonke educate sex workers about their rights regarding police and provide them with direct legal services in partnership with NGOs like the Women’s Legal Centre to back up this rights education.

At our second stop along the main road we approach a young woman named Sana. She has curly dark brown hair down to her chin and sleepy eyes. As Dudu approaches her, a small gray car with a man inside passes by. “Stop, darling,” she whispers, reaching out her hand in the air as he slows down briefly and then speeds up. “We saw you the other night when we were doing outreach, do you remember me?” Dudu asks her. Sana smiles and nods in recognition. “Do you want to take a rapid HIV test tonight? I remember last time you weren’t sure.” As Sana eyes the mobile wellness van parked next to us, she asks, “Will it really only take fifteen minutes?”

“Yes, it’s fast, accurate, and confidential, and we have a nurse and counselor with us who will administer the test and answer any of your questions. And they can refer you to medical clinics that are friendly to sex workers for follow-up if necessary,” Dudu assures her. Sana pauses for a few seconds, her head tilted slightly to the side, a somewhat wary smile lingering on her face as she decides whether to trust us. “Yes, I’d like to get tested,” she finally says and hops quickly into the back of the van with Tina and Buyi while Eunice, Dudu, and I wait outside.

As we wait, a police car slowly and somewhat menacingly circles the block. Sex work is illegal in South Africa. “We sometimes wear t-shirts that say, ‘Leave us alone and tackle real crime,’” Eunice says, watching the police cruiser turn the corner and disappear. “Our outreach team hasn’t had problems with the cops, but some other teams have experienced police harassment because we’re providing services to sex workers,” she says incredulously, shaking her head. When Sana emerges from the back of the van in less than fifteen minutes, as Dudu promised, she seems relieved. “Ciao,” she says softly with a smile now devoid of suspicion as she walks away.

Rejecting Anti-Prostitution Activists’ Single Story of Sex Work

The types of services for sex workers that programs like SWEAT and Sisonke deliver—condoms and personal lubricant to facilitate safe-sex practices, STI and HIV testing, tuberculosis screening, referrals to health clinics, information about rights, legal aid services, sex worker–led organizing, and harm reduction for people who use drugs—have long been celebrated by global health bodies like WHO and UNAIDS as essential to protecting sex workers’ health and human rights.2 Sex worker peer educators like Dudu and Eunice treat every single sex worker who uses their services with kindness, professionalism, respect, and, most important, no judgment, focusing instead on providing sex workers with the tools they need to work safely. Their work mirrors the outreach efforts of many sex worker organizations throughout the world, like the well-known Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), comprising thousands of organized sex workers in Sonagachi, the famous red-light district in Kolkata, India.3

Anti-prostitution activists would argue that sex workers, or “prostituted women” as they prefer to call them,4 don’t need condoms or “know your rights” workshops—they need rescue from prostitution. Some anti-prostitution activists openly criticize the lifesaving assistance sex workers’ rights organizations routinely provide to sex workers.5 But Indian sex workers in Sonagachi and South African sex workers in Cape Town clearly need this assistance. The reason anti-prostitution activists dismiss outreach programs aimed at sex worker empowerment is that these programs go against the idea that all sex workers are victims of what activists argue is prostitution’s inherent violence. Western anti-prostitution activists have long argued that sex work is a form of patriarchal violence against women. Some African reformers have also embraced these anti-prostitution arguments. For instance, Fatoumata Sire Diakite, a Malian activist affiliated with the Coalition against Trafficking in Women (CATW), an influential global anti-prostitution organization, argues, “Prostitution is violence against women and a violation of human rights.”6

Anti-prostitution activists’ insistence on this monolithic narrative exemplifies what the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie refers to as “the danger of a single story.” Adichie has argued that when we have a single story about particular people and places it erases the voices and experiences of those who don’t fit that universalized narrative.7 In describing her American college roommate’s stereotypes of Africa and Africans, Adichie noted: “Her default position toward me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story there was no possibility of Africans’ being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of connection as human equals.”8 In the single story of her roommate’s imagination, Africa was a continent of people “unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind white foreigner.”9 The danger of a single story, then, is that it makes “one story become the only story.”10

When I first listened to Adichie’s talk, I immediately reflected on how many anti-prostitution activists’ arguments exhibit the “danger of a single story” by presenting sex workers as simple objects of pity and potential rescue incapable of speaking for themselves. Because these ideas have penetrated the mainstream, it is difficult for many people to imagine sex workers as capable of consent and agency. This is perhaps why, when I tell people that much of my human rights work is in solidarity with sex workers fighting for their rights, they often interpret that as my saying, “I work on sex trafficking.” This is partly because although human trafficking (the movement of individuals through force, threat of force, coercion, or deception into a situation of forced labor)11 and sex work (the exchange of sexual services as labor between consenting adults) are not the same, anti-prostitution activists have co-opted anti-trafficking language to purposefully conflate the two. They argue that consent in the context of prostitution is impossible and that therefore all sex workers have been forced into sex work—either literally or by circumstance—and our primary focus must be the facilitation of their rescue, not the realization of their rights. They have created a global campaign that, at its core, is not about human trafficking or forced labor but about advancing an anti-prostitution agenda.12 (There are indeed people within the sex industry—as there are within the agricultural, construction, domestic care, garment trade, and factory industries—who are the victims of trafficking into forced labor. But the conflation of sex work and trafficking does nothing to help survivors of trafficking gain access to the resources and social services they need.)13 The narrative that people cannot consent to engage in sex work fits squarely into anti-prostitution activists’ “single story.”

Why is this single story dangerous? Because when we insist that sex workers are “victims” incapable of speaking for themselves, we silence them. When we ignore the multiplicity of sex workers’ experiences, we deny them agency. And when we contend that the primary concern for sex workers is the sex involved in sex work and not the criminalized and stigmatized nature of their work, not the material conditions of their labor, we fail to acknowledge and address the actual abuses many sex worker communities face.

* * *

At the next stop on the nighttime outreach work I’m observing in Cape Town, Dudu approaches a young woman named Rena who’s standing on a corner under a large citrus tree next to a short, rail-thin man who averts his eyes as we approach. At first I’m not sure who he is—all I notice are his hands, a layer of dark soot caked over them, clutching a mobile phone tightly. A minute or so after we arrive and exchange greetings he leaves us to speak with Rena alone, walking away without looking back. Later Dudu says, “Some ‘pimps’ want the girls to speak to us and will make sure to give them the space to do so. Others won’t.” Rena is very pretty, spirited right from the beginning of our chat with her, which is intermittently interrupted by her boyfriend, who calls twice to see if she’s okay. Her hair is pulled back in a tight ponytail, and she’s wearing a white dress with ruffles and dangling red earrings, her hands fluttering excitedly in the air as she speaks: “We need info! The girls don’t know their rights! You need to pressure girls to come to Sisonke because they don’t know their rights!”

“We have lots of human rights pamphlets with us. Do you want some to pass out to your friends?” Dudu asks. “Yes!” Rena says eagerly. Dudu explains the topics covered by each of the brochures, all specifically created for sex workers, on how to report police abuse, practice safer sex, and safeguard their health. Rena listens carefully and grabs an armful of pamphlets, promising to share them with others as she scuttles off and yells back over her shoulder, “Thank you! Gotta go! Have to make money!”

Still making our way through the southern suburbs, we turn off the main street onto Lansdowne Road, which is darker, lonelier, some of the streetlights missing their bulbs. We see a tall woman in a black shawl standing on the side of the road alone and pull up next to her. She looks at the van curiously and starts to walk away quickly when Dudu steps out of the van. Dudu follows her for a few brief seconds while gently saying, “We only want to talk to you and see if there’s anything you need.” But the woman doesn’t stop, looking over her shoulder as she moves on, so Dudu backs off. “She’s not ready,” Dudu says calmly as we return to the van. Of the thirty or so sex workers we’ll approach over the course of the night, she was the only one who chose not to engage. But the response from the outreach workers was the same—they respect each person’s desires. They never apply pressure. They only present options.

We’re now going down a main road that is normally busy even at this time of night but is now eerily quiet. We pull up next to a transgender sex worker named Greta. SWEAT and Sisonke host weekly support groups for “female, male, and transgender” sex workers, migrant sex workers, HIV-positive and HIV-negative sex workers, and sex workers struggling with substance addiction. Greta used to attend some of these meetings, but Dudu and Eunice haven’t seen her around for some time.

“How are you doing?” Eunice asks her. “Surviving,” Greta replies with a smile, elongating the second syllable of the word, a hint of playful mischief in her voice. Her makeup is done impeccably, and she’s wearing bright colors—pops of fluorescent pink and green. Her hair is long and auburn. “You look so beautiful tonight,” Dudu tells her, and then softly, tenderly, “How come you no longer come to SWEAT and Sisonke? We haven’t seen you in a long time.”

“Well, since Sasha,” Greta says slowly, her eyes falling to the pavement, her voice trailing off until there’s only the sound of the wind and a sad, knowing silence between her, Dudu, and Eunice. Sasha was a transgender female sex worker, and two months ago, someone posing as a potential client stabbed her through the heart. She died in the middle of the street, not far from where we’re standing now, and the police still haven’t found her killer—although it’s doubtful they’re seriously searching for suspects.

After a few moments pass, Greta starts to speak about the intensified police harassment she’s experienced in the past few weeks. “All of my fines are stacking up,” she says, worry creeping over her lovely face. “We have paralegals who can accompany you to court to fight the fines and get them dismissed,” Eunice reassures her. “If the fines pile up, and we don’t fight them, the cops can issue a warrant for your arrest and send you to jail at Pollsmoor the next time they pick you up. So it’s better if we help you fight them.” “Pollsmoor” is a name that elicits terror on the faces of sex workers in Cape Town. It is an overcrowded, dangerous maximum-security prison where cops sometimes dump sex workers for days. Nelson Mandela spent some of his twenty-seven-year imprisonment there. “I never knew that I could fight the fines,” Greta says surprised, assuring them she’ll try to start attending SWEAT and Sisonke workshops again. She calls a friend over to come pick up lubricant from the v...