Sex workers hope for World Cup bonanza

The Sunday Times catches her entertaining a naked man during a "bust" by the city's vice squad - a unit established almost eight months ago to rid the city streets of sex workers.

On the eve of the World Cup, pretty young faces selling their bodies are sprouting like mushrooms around the city, and sex workers around the country are hoping to rake in foreign currency from tourists.

Turning her face to avoid the cameras, Skye agrees to speak to the Sunday Times on condition of anonymity. While she works as a lady of the night, Skye's family thinks she is baby-sitting.

She doesn't think she is committing a crime, and has been in the trade for only four months. By day, she is a clerk at a Cape Town factory, earning less than R4000 a month. With eight people to support, her pay is simply not enough.

"My mom lost her job, and basically we're a big family. No one was working. I'm the only income, and I can't keep them. I have to support myself and my son. He is five. His dad died in a car crash when he was two. So a few times a week I come in (to the parlour) from 10 to two. My mother would obviously be upset if she found out, but . she will know in her heart that I'm not doing it for fun. I don't even keep R10 for myself," she said almost defiantly.

Skye was recruited by a friend who has been a prostitute for eight years.

"I don't drink, I don't touch alcohol, but I was drunk when I did it for the first time. I was totally drunk, drunk.

"I can deal in drugs, but I won't take that risk. I can steal, but I won't. So this is the only way, the only honest way."

Skye is hard at work trying to find her mother a job. She sends her CV to "every place I can".

Her father, she claimed, has not been around since she was a little girl.

Skye's client, a coffee shop manager and father of three, claimed he opted to use sex workers after his marriage broke down. "Women change," said the chain-smoking 40-something man.

The massage parlour, which insists all its sex workers get massage qualifications, charges a standard R950 an hour and R1 650 for a night with Skye.

The pretty petite blonde said she would say goodbye to the industry when her family was financially stable.

A few blocks from the massage parlour, other young women are plying their trade on the streets, relying on their wits for protection.

When the Sunday Times accompanied the vice squad, 16 street sex workers were rounded up and profiled. Only four were picked up for the second time. The rest were new faces, including 24-year-old Lauren, who was picked up on Voortrekker Road.

She tried at first to fob off the police by explaining she had so many condoms in her bag because she had such an active sex life. And the blonde wig? She claimed it was a bad hair day.

"For this kind of work, you don't need a qualification like other jobs. All you need is grade 1," she said later while holding hands with her friend Alicia.

The vice squad's spokesman, Neil Arendse, said the squad had noticed a rise in the number of sex workers on Cape Town's streets.

Arendse said sex workers drawn to prostitution in Cape Town from other provinces were usually lured by boyfriends, who make false promises of employment in the city.

At a suspected brothel operating as an unlicensed guest house, the squad found about six Chinese women with refugee papers and two outside rooms full of used condoms.

At another "guest house", the squad found a room with porn playing next to the picture of the Virgin Mary. On the wall a price list read: "Strip show: R1200 p/h, lesbian show at R750 p/h, couple threesome R850 p/h.

"Interviewing these ladies has given us the impression - as some have explicitly stated - that they want to make money out of the World Cup, and will stop after," Arendse said.

Lobby group SWEAT's spokesman, Vivienne Lalu, said talk of sex workers rolling in the money during the World Cup was mere speculation. "Every day the formal economy is recalculating their potential earnings. So, too, is the informal sector. Obviously, the girls are looking forward to being paid in foreign currency, and hoping to make more money. But it still remains to be seen."

At the end of the night's raid one of the sex workers, who was clearly inebriated, called out: "You have wasted my time, officers. Now, when you see me back on the road, I'll be naked. I need to make money."

Big jump in street walkers

The City of Cape Town's vice squad has found that:

• There has been a hike in the number of sex workers in Cape Town. In January and February, the squad recorded 97 "new faces";
• The majority of the new faces on Cape Town's streets are South African - and only 11% are foreigners;
• They are between 18 and 30 years old;
• Most of the sex workers do not have a matric qualification;
• The majority are addicted to drugs; and
• 90% of the men found in the brothels are married professionals, including doctors and lawyers.

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