Residents of the upmarket Cape Town suburb of Green Point say prostitutes have flooded their neighbourhood, but the city council says its hands are tied when it comes to policing the world's oldest profession effectively.
"The police can't do anything about them," said Green Point Neighbourhood Watch operations manager Bradley Braithwaite.
He was referring to a 2009 Cape High Court interdict that stops police and metro police from arresting sex workers whom they have no intention of prosecuting.
Braithwaite said residents feared that the prostitutes were bringing drug-dealing, and an attendant surge of crime, into the area.
"Prostitution does not paint a pretty picture for our foreign visitors," said Braithwaite.
The spokeswoman for the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce, Lesego Tlhwale, said prostitution was common not only in Green Point but everywhere in South Africa.
"It's about the girls moving around and finding a profitable corner," she said.
The CEO of the Green Point City Improvement District, Marc Truss, said security vehicles were stationed at strategic points to discourage customers from engaging the services of street-corner sex workers.
"Potential customers, when they see our presence, move off."
But a Cape Town mayoral committee member for safety and security, JP Smith, said there was no way that the city would consider any form of red-light district.
He said, though the city had a complex strategy for reducing the number of sex workers soliciting from street corners, "sadly, there has been a resurgence. Someone has taken their foot off the pedal."
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