South Africa, at the tip of the African continent, is the regional powerhouse, with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP), US$159.9billion, four times greater than its southern African neighbours. It represents approximately 25% of the continent’s GDP. From September 1999 to June 2005, the average economic growth rate was 3.5%. It also ranks 42nd out of 117 countries for global competitiveness.
Unfortunately, South Africa is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for forced labour, sexual exploitation and organ harvesting.
Because of its well established infrastructure, the movement of such ‘commodities’ is able to be well organized. Of the many trafficked people, approximately 247,000 children are estimated to be working in exploitative labour, included in this is child prostitution. This makes children exposed and vulnerable to the deception and exploitation of traffickers. Such vulnerable are easy targets for slave traders. Of the above figure, it is estimated that about 30,000 of them are child prostitutes.
Once involved in the criminal environment children can be emotionally intimidated, physically moved and trapped into trafficking. Many of these children simply ‘disappear’ year after year – ending up in Asian, European and sometimes American sweatshops or brothels.
Traditional migration patterns of labour to South Africafrom surrounding countries, the practice of children being loaned or sent to better-situated family members in urban areas to be raised, and casual border procedures between South Africa and the neighbouring countries contribute to the extensive numbers of woman and children smuggled in and out of South Africa for slavery purposes.
Retrenchment of thousands of migrant labourers to surrounding countries from South Africa’s mines and farms over the past decade has fuelled the regional unemployed labour force thus adding more ‘recruits’ to the growing slave trade.
Armed conflicts in countries in the Southern African region have created an additional influx or refugees (27,000 in 2004) who, arriving in South Africa and often unable to find employment or decent shelter, become additional ‘prospects’ for human traffickers.
In spite of overall economic growth, poverty, both urban and rural, is the most visible cause of trafficking in humans, particularly women and children. Many children live in communities excluded from the free market economy. In some peri-urban areas more than half the adult population is unemployed, and those in employment earn below-subsistence wages. In such contexts people resort to risky survival strategies and become more vulnerable to human trafficking.
Gender discrimination remains a problem in South Africa in spite of a progressive Constitution that guarantees human rights and gender equality. This too contributes to the problem.
Anti-trafficking legislation to align domestic law and penalties with international standards (Palermo Protocol) is being developed to attempt to stall or reduce the increase in human trafficking but to date has had a minor impact on the problem. Organized transnational criminal groups trading in human beings are well-established and legislation isn’t yet strong enough to hit them hard.
One of the main elements to improve conditions for many is awareness.
The more people that know about and are enraged about the abuse of others, the more pressure is brought to bear on governments to enact effective legislation and put in mechanisms to halt this evil.
The first internationally agreed upon definition of trafficking is embodied in the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (2000). It states:
The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means ofthe threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception,of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of paymentsor benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person,for the purpose of exploitation.
Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others orother forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similarto slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.
The consent of a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation…shall beirrelevant where any of the…[fore-mentioned] means…have been used.The recruitment, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitationshall be considered’ trafficking in persons,’ even if it does not involve …[any of the abovelisted means].
“Child” shall mean any person under eighteen years of age (Art. 3)
