Democracy’s new untouchables
ANDILE MNGXITAMA: COMMENT – Jul 29 2008 06:00

There is something sickeningly rotten about the hypocrisy of our society. The very foundations of our post-1994 society were birthed on forked tongues. What else do we make of the preamble to our Constitution, which speaks movingly about “past injustices” and commitment to a society driven by “democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights” and the everyday treatment meted out to the racialised vulnerables of our society?

It doesn’t stop there. The Constitution promises that “every citizen” shall be “equally protected by law”. Really? How do we account for the violations of sex workers permitted by the police?

The Constitution’s founding provisions wax lyrical about “human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms”. Truth is, for the many majorities who are socially, economically and politically emasculated, the promises of the Constitution must sound like swear words.

Where is dignity in the life of squatters, of farm dwellers, the hungry and the abandoned in townships?

Increasingly sex workers have been added to the list of democracy’s untouchables, the Dalits of our freedom, abandoned by God, state and society.

It is equally telling that those who have been on the receiving end of police brutality are black sex workers. The race plague knows no social etiquette. In fact, there is a case to be made that these sex workers are so vulnerable precisely because they are black.

New amendments to the Sexual Offences Act provide for further criminalisation of sex work and the police, our guardians of peace and justice, have gone into overdrive. On Friday nights, police vans screech to a halt, insults are belched and women are bundled into cold vans or doors are broken down, women are beaten and raped.

These godforsaken beings are robbed of any money they have, assaulted, raped and, if they can’t pay the bribe, locked up until Monday when they are released without being charged. This is the everyday life of sex workers. It can get worse — being murdered, for example — and no one cares.

When offered an opportunity to decriminalise sex work, to throw the desperate women a line, to add a layer of protection to the vulnerable, the highest court of our land, our beloved Constitutional Court, dropped the ball and looked the other way. It said: “Let the legislative arm do its job.”

The result of this dereliction of duty is the granting of carte blanche abusive power to the police, because they are not only unenforceable, but also expose the sex worker to abuse by clients.

Now the man can refuse to pay for sex on account of being a law-abiding citizen. So the sex worker faces double jeopardy — at the hands of the state and the client.

And the esteemed judges of the Constitutional Court go about in their pious robes.

One would have hoped that the recent highly publicised Johannesburg police brutalities against sex workers would have at least moved the hearts of civil society, the feminist sisterhood and the chapter-nine institutions. No such luck.

Of the seven abused and allegedly raped sex workers, three plucked up courage to confront the same police station which harbours their tormentors and had refused to open cases against the police officers concerned. As a daily newspaper put it, they “took on the police” — alone.

A friend put her finger on something profound about the inconsistencies of the “human rights industry”. She said: “Think of how Nwabisa Ngukana was supported and the black missionaries rushed to civilise the barbarians at the Noord Street taxi rank. The prostitutes deserve what they are getting and the police are only doing the Lord’s work. Why else are the Redi Direkos of the world quiet?”

That got me thinking.

The official voices pushing for the decriminalisation of sex work are informed by concerns to make the 2010 World Cup a “success”, as African National Congress MP George Lekhetho said, echoing the suspended police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi’s call to suspend the criminalisation of sex work for 2010.

The eThekwini municipality has thrown its weight behind this, with its intentions to declare a red-light district for 2010. No one is talking about the interests of the sex workers in all these moves.

We, the caring nation built from the rainbow of God.

Source: Mail & Guardian Online
Web Address: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-07-29-democracys-new-untouchables