Not hookers, just waiting for a taxi

Three women sitting at a Sandton petrol station at midnight on a Monday must be sex workers, right?

That was what the two policemen thought who arrested the women and threw them into a grimy cell with a blocked open toilet.

Their action cost taxpayers R120000, plus costs, after one of the women successfully sued for unlawful arrest and detention.

The women were, in fact, waiting for a taxi after a night out at Mandela Square in February 2014.

Thandeka Mathe, from Soweto, told Judge Ingrid Opperman she lost her job after being detained for 37 hours, and burst into tears in the Johannesburg High Court when describing her experience.

Opperman said women were entitled to protection from the police.

"When the police turn on those they are supposed to protect, the constitutional order is threatened," she said. She would have expected the police to wait nearby until a taxi arrived to take the women home.

"Instead [they] took them to a place of filth and fear for two days without even the benefit of being allowed to advise their loved ones or their employer of their fate."

Mathe, a single mother of two, lost her job as assistant manager of a video store in Alberton.

Opperman railed against the treatment of women.

"That those who ... play such a valuable role should be treated so badly is a bitter irony that all South Africans, particularly members of the police service, should be working towards eliminating."

The officers who arrested the three women "added unnecessarily to the infinite quotient of women's humiliation and distress", she said.