'It's risky but we have to do it': sex workers on Joburg's mean streets

“Streets have never been safe, but we do it to survive.”

So says a sex worker sitting on the corner of Anderson and Goud streets in downtown Johannesburg. 

While sitting with other sex workers on Thursday afternoon, she kept looking up the street, hoping a customer would pick her up.

By the afternoon, she had  not conducted any business and expressed her worry that she would not get a client.

While TimesLIVE was on the scene, some sex workers walked past,  complaining that security officials from the building nearby keep harassing them and chasing them off the street.

“Doing business here is no longer the same as before. They keep harassing us and you will never know if you are safe or not,” she said.

The 42-year-old woman from Vryheid in KwaZulu-Natal arrived in Johannesburg in 2007 with her boyfriend and lived in Yeoville.

She said she walked every day to Anderson Street to do sex trade which she started when her boyfriend, with whom she was staying, died in 2017. She has been doing the sex trade ever since.

“I arrived here because of suffering. After my boyfriend passed away I tried looking for a job until I realised that it was better to just sell my body as long as my family back home and my children don't know this is what I do for a living,” she said.

The mother of two said she stays alone in Yeoville and has left her children back home in KZN.

“At the time when I started, it was great and there was money. It's great when you do a sex trade and get money, even though it is not an ideal job but getting money at the end of the day was great,” she said. 

She said being on the streets has never been safe and she feels secure only when she is at a hotel but even there she knows anything can happen.

She said back when she started, she could generate about R500 a day but business has dried up as there are many sex workers in downtown Johannesburg, which has led to tough competition. 

“Sometimes you may not even get one client. But on a good day, some people get about 10 clients. As we are talking there are people who are making money,” she said. 

According to her, customers who need their services have to book a hotel close by, paying about R60 for an hour or R200 for the night.

The lives of sex workers in Johannesburg came to light last week when the trial of Sifiso Mkhwanazi started at the Johannesburg high court, sitting in Palm Ridge. 

She added that she used to attend the court proceedings while the case was still at the Johannesburg magistrate's court.

This week, a witness who is a sex worker testified how she last saw one of the victims, Joyce Moyo, alive on Goud Street.

“I was shocked when I heard about the boy who killed sex workers. At the end of the day, we are people. We have children and selling sex on the street is not funny. It is because there are no jobs. We also want to look after ourselves, support our families and put food on the table.

“It shocked me that it was the people we knew and worked with.. The one he [Mkhwanazi] picked up here was Joyce whom we worked with  on the street. In my opinion, he must just rot in jail, he doesn’t deserve to live with people.

“Even us as people who work on the streets, nobody cares about us. Even the government doesn’t care,” she said. 

Mbuli (not her real name) from Mbabane in Eswatini said streets were not safe but she needed to survive. 

According to her, sex workers who are safe in Johannesburg are those who operate at End Street under the bridges. She said there were bodyguards and rooms that sex workers could rent.

“Here it's either they pick us up and go to their place or at the hotel. Afterwards, instead of taking you back, they take off all your clothes and leave you naked on the side of the road. At that time, they had already slept with you,” she said. 

The 28-year-old woman said prices depended on agreements with a client.

“We used to charge them more like R500 or R700 for the whole night but now there are many of us on the street and the competition is tight — we no longer charge them that, more like R200 for the whole night.

She added that besides the price, business was scarce and the few remaining clients negotiated lower prices.

She believes the only way to be safe on the street is to work together as colleagues and record the number plates of customers' cars, or take pictures. 

“We are afraid but what will we eat?” she asked, indicating that customers are often hesitant to pay for services. 

“They do that, not everyone is willing to pay, sometime you will fight with that person to give you the money but at times you will realise that you cannot win that battle, you just cry and it ends there.

“Some you will take them on but some you will see that there is nothing you can do about it. We don’t have bodyguards this side except under the bridge on End Street. The job is easier on that side because they are afraid of those bodyguards and there are rooms on that side,” she said.

Mbuli said she arrived in Johannesburg in 2017 but left amid the Covid-19 restrictions. She said at the time she used to earn enough money and would visit home regularly. 

She added that after Covid-19, the business has just been bad and there was no money on the streets.

“When I arrived here I knew I was going to be a sex worker, I had already made a decision when I left my home country.

“Sometimes you earn R40 a day and when it's busy can make R150. Today I haven’t made any money so it is bad,” she said.   

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