Human Trafficking Around the World (40 page)

PART VIII

Muti Murder

One of the most horrifying forms of human trafficking occurs in the name of traditional medicine. Muti murder (
muti
is the word commonly used for traditional medicine in South Africa) involves abducting people, killing them, and harvesting their body parts for use in ritual or cult practices. Believers in these rituals hold that the use of human body parts is more potent than other muti and can bring about wealth, luck, and fertility. Identified victims in South Africa include babies and toddlers, young boys and girls, and adults; the victims are found missing body parts such as heads, hearts, kidneys, tongues, ears, breasts, and genitalia. Many female victims are raped beforehand
.

Studies indicate that the human body parts used in traditional medicine in South Africa tend to come from persons killed in South Africa or in Mozambique. Experts estimate that somewhere between 12 to 300 muti murders occur per year in South Africa. Determining exact numbers is nearly impossible, as murders are not categorized by type. Moreover, by the time some potential muti murder victims are discovered, decomposition has occurred or predators have eaten at the body, so that determining the cause of death is difficult
.

One challenge in addressing the problem is the strong community belief in traditional medicine. Someone who believes in a traditional healer will often consult with a healer before implementing recommendations from a physician. The government continues to meet with traditional healers to discuss the measures necessary to stop muti killings and the demand for rituals that involve harvested human body parts. The immense trust in healers allows them to promote awareness far more effectively than anti-trafficking advocates could do alone. Experts believe that healers’ involvement is crucial to raising awareness on the danger muti killings pose to those who practice traditional medicine
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CHAPTER 16

South Africa

Sometimes we rape them. We call it “washing the hands.”

—A SOUTH AFRICAN HUMAN TRAFFICKER

As is the case with all nations, human trafficking in South Africa cannot be properly evaluated in isolation from its specific culture, economy, and laws. Because South Africa has four times the GDP of its neighbors, it is an attractive destination for both migrants and traffickers. Insufficient control over the nation’s vast borders, lack of a comprehensive anti-trafficking law, and the demand for body parts used in traditional healing also contribute to South Africa’s unique trafficking scenario. Although South Africa is primarily a destination for human trafficking, it also serves as a transit nation, and its citizens are also trafficked both internally and abroad (NPA/ HSRC, 2010).

As HIV/AIDS becomes more of a concern among clients, the demand for underage children for commercial sexual exploitation is increasing in all of South Africa’s trafficking streams (NPA/HSRC, 2010). Social workers and officers of the Child Protection Unit (CPU) estimated in 2000 that there were 28,000 child prostitutes in South Africa (Molo Songololo, 2000). This statistic continues to be recounted in the media and expert reports even though the data is more than a decade old. According to Patrie Solomons, director of the child advocacy group Molo Songololo, this is in part because South Africa does not have a central data collection in place. “As for the numbers … we have no idea how big the problem is,” Solomons said. Since 2000, according to Solomons, there has been an increase in the detection, investigation, and prosecution of child prostitution–related cases. Yet it is still a prevalent problem. “Our experience tells us that child sexual exploitation is more widely practiced than we would like to believe; that it is complex in nature and often parents, adults, police, social workers, community, etc., turn a blind eye … street prostitution and prostitution of children in brothels and drug-dens are often exposed by media and police raids; however, sexual exploitation of children by “respected adults” in local communities by ordinary men, employed, unemployed, married, unmarried [is] more common.” Solomons says that it is not just men who are involved in the sexual exploitation of children. “There is a role played by older prostitutes and women who facilitate the prostitution of children or procure children for sexual use by clients on demand.”
¹
Carol Bews, assistant director of the NGO Jo’burg Child Welfare in Marshalltown, says the nation’s history has led to poverty and a distorted view regarding the sexualization of children:

People have been subjected to oppression and poor living conditions. As a result, there is a lack of boundaries because people live on top of each other. We have a high use of children in sexual exploitation, which has led to our current culture—it is entrenched in our current way of being. Children are seen as sexual objects because they are perceived to be sexually mature at a much younger age than that of persons in other countries. For example, an 11-year-old can be perceived to be sexually mature. As a result, it is believed that it is okay for a person to have sex at a far younger age.

Slavery, servitude, and forced labor are prohibited under provisions in the South African Bill of Rights, dating from 1996. Trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation is punishable under the 2007 Sexual Offenses and Related Matters Amendment Act (SOA) and the 2005 Children’s Act 38. Still, these forms of trafficking persist. Comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation, called the Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Bill was introduced in South Africa’s Parliament in March 2010. In November 2011 the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development revised the bill, and in August 2011 the department began to draft implementation regulations. As of September 2012 the bill had not yet passed.

SOUTH AFRICA AS A DESTINATION

Persons from Bulgaria, China, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Romania, Russia, Taiwan, Thailand, and Ukraine are trafficked to South Africa for forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. South Africa is also a destination for persons trafficked from other African nations—Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe—for commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor (U.S. Department of State, 2009, 2010; NPA/ HSRC, 2010). Shelter information offers a glimpse into the country breakdown of trafficking victims in South Africa. Of 93 trafficking victims sheltered by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in South Africa in 2005 and 2006, the majority (64.5 percent; 60 persons) were from Thailand.
³
Other significant countries of origin were India (9 persons), the Congo (7 persons), Mozambique (5 persons), and Zimbabwe (4 persons) (UNODC, 2009).

The economic wealth of South Africa is a key factor in making it a trafficking destination. Its GDP in 2003 was $159.9 billion—four times greater than that of its neighbors and roughly 24 percent of Africa’s entire GDP. By 2012 South Africa’s GDP had risen to $408.2 billion (UNESCO, 2007; World Bank, 2012). According to Nde Ndifonka, the media and communication liaison for the IOM, South Africa is perceived as the land of opportunity in the region. “It is therefore easy for traffickers to lure victims with promises of a better life. Millions of migrants come each year and their particular vulnerabilities during and after the journey to the country can lead them into a trafficking situation.”
⁴

The lack of sufficient patrolling along the vast borders between South Africa and its neighbors has enabled the smuggling of migrants and the transport of trafficking victims into the country. “This movement is undocumented; when these people are offended they do not even report to the police because they are here illegally,” said Sibongile Manana, a member of the Executive Council in Mpumalanga. “They are even used by criminals to commit crime because we do not have their fingerprints” (Ndawonde, 2009). An additional concern is that officials accept bribes in the international trafficking of persons. Amanda Ledwaba, head of law enforcement at the Department of Home Affairs, addressed this issue at a February 2008 IOM workshop on human trafficking. Ledwaba told workshop participants that 90 percent of the illegal border crossings into the country took place with the involvement of officials and police (Cole, 2008).

One case that illustrates such collusion is that between South African police and Giang Brooderyk, a 34-year-old trafficker from Thailand. Brooderyk, with the help of her connections in the Department of Home Affairs, the police, and the aviation industry, was able to transport victims between Thailand and South Africa with fraudulent travel documents. She allegedly recruited Thai girls, under the guise of employment at a massage parlor, to force them to work as prostitutes at her brothel in South Africa. When arrested in November 2009, she was charged with immigration violations—specifically, for assisting the girls to enter the country illegally (SAPA, 2009). In the absence of a comprehensive anti-trafficking law, prosecutors have utilized immigration and other trafficking-related offenses to arrest and prosecute traffickers. Another case of police collusion is that of a trafficking syndicate that allegedly trafficked 30 to 40 women per month from Mozambique to South Africa between 2004 and 2010. The women were lured by the promise of waitress jobs in the restaurant and hotel industry but were forced to prostitute upon arrival in South Africa. Those who resisted were raped and beaten. The syndicate was made up of 15 citizens from Mozambique and several Chinese citizens. The main transporter was Nando Matsingi, who lived in Johannesburg. Each week he drove from South Africa to Maputo, Mozambique, to pick up the “sold” women and take them to South Africa. Policemen helped him transport the women illegally across the border. “I do this very often,” Matsingi told undercover Media24 journalists who pretended to be interested buyers and secretly taped conversations with the traffickers.
⁵
“I took three girls last week. … One was Chinese and the other two were Mozambicans.” The quoted cost to purchase one girl or woman was $687 (AllAfrica, 2010).

The IOM estimates that each year nearly 1,000 women and children are trafficked across the Mozambique border into South Africa. Not all victims are lured by false promises of legitimate employment; child victims are often ensnared by relatives or family acquaintances. This is exactly what happened to Jabu, a 10-year-old girl from a small Mozambique village near the Lebombo border. One day Jabu was walking to buy bread for her mother when she was intercepted by a friend of her mother. The woman told Jabu that she must accompany her to the bread shop but instead took the girl to Rosettenville, Johannesburg, where she was forced to prostitute and was raped at gunpoint (Carte Blanche, 2007). In addition to false recruitment and confiscation of travel documents, rape is a common characteristic of trafficking. It is often used as a fear tactic to deter victims from attempting escape. “Sometimes we rape them,” said a trafficker to an undercover investigative team. “We call it ‘washing the hands’” (Attwood, 2009).

Although insufficiently manned border posts and corrupt border officials have created easy opportunities for traffickers to transport victims, an internal push within law enforcement may help change this pattern. “IOM has trained over 1,500 officials in South Africa, including those at several border posts and within airports to detect cases of trafficking,” said Nde Ndifonka. “There is growing momentum within law enforcement to increase their understanding and role in combating the crime. This is hopefully a step forward to decreasing the possibilities and potential for corruption.”
⁶
Corruption is also a problem in other branches of South African law enforcement. Carol Bews noted that one of the focus topics at an anticorruption workshop in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region was the collusion of police at brothels where there is forced prostitution. Experts at the workshop asserted that brothels in prostitute-dense areas of Johannesburg do house trafficking victims but “will never be raided by police because the police are in collusion with these brothels. They themselves go in and receive sexual services.”
⁷

Although anti-trafficking efforts in South Africa tend to focus primarily on commercial sexual exploitation, persons are also trafficked for forced labor, often in the form of sweatshop work, farm labor, or domestic servitude. Men from China and Taiwan are trafficked for forced labor in mobile sweatshop factories located in Chinese urban enclaves. The factories are able to evade South African labor inspectors by moving the sweatshops to neighboring nations such as Lesotho and Swaziland (U.S. Department of State, 2009). Another example of forced labor is the case of 11-year-old Nellie, who was abducted from her home in Swaziland. Taken while her family was out, Nellie was trafficked to the town of Barberton in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. Forced to do domestic work and hard labor, Nellie was beaten if she did not complete all the work assigned by her trafficker. “She would come back and find that I hadn’t done all the work she had given me,” Nellie told
Carte Blanche
. “She would beat me up for that. The work was too much for me and so I couldn’t finish it in time” (Carte Blanche, 2007).

In some cases persons voluntarily migrate to South Africa but face forced labor upon arrival. For instance, young men and boys from Malawi, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe voluntarily migrate to South Africa to work on farms but are then exploited by unscrupulous employers, sometimes working for months with little to no pay while facing conditions of involuntary servitude. These same employers have the workers arrested and deported after reporting them as illegal immigrants (U.S. Department of State, 2009; 2012).

TRAFFICKING WITHIN SOUTH AFRICA

South African citizens are trafficked from rural to urban areas for prostitution; domestic servitude; agricultural work; forced marriage, known as
ukuthwala
; begging; food service;
muti
, the removal of body parts and organs for use in traditional healing; street vending; drug trafficking; and other forms of criminal activity (U.S. Department of State, 2009; NPA/HSRC, 2010).