Targets of Hate, Shame or Exploitation?: The (Violent) Conundrum of Sex Work in Democratic South Africa

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intecritdivestud.3.1.0009
• Published date: 01 June 2020
• Date: 01 June 2020
• Pages: 9-24
• Author: Marlise Richter,Zia Wasserman,Ishtar Lakhani
• Subject Matter: Sex work,hate crimes,whorephobia,South Africa,stigma

International Journal of CRITICAL DIVERSITY STUDIES 3.1 June 2020

Targets of Hate, Shame or Exploitation?

The (Violent) Conundrum of Sex Work in Democratic

South Africa

Marlise Richter

African Centre for Migration & Society, University of the

Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Zia Wasserman

Independent Scholar, Sonke Gender Justice, Cape Town, South Africa

Ishtar Lakhani

Independent Scholar, Cape Town, South Africa

Marlise Richter has worked in health and human rights-focused organisations for

many years and in a number of different key South African non-governmental

organisations (NGOs). She worked as a researcher at Project Literacy, the AIDS

Law Project, the Treatment Action Campaign and the Reproductive Health and

HIV Research Unit. She holds a BA(Hons) and LLM degree from Wits University,

and completed an MA in International Peace Studies from the University of Notre

Dame (USA) as a Fulbright scholar. In 2013, she graduated with a PhD in public

health from the International Centre for Reproductive Health at the University

of Ghent (Belgium) on sex worker access to health care services in sub-Saharan

Africa. She has published in the areas of law, bioethics, gender, migration and

public health, while also writing popular pieces for newspapers. She is a senior

researcher at the Health Justice Initiative and a visiting researcher at the African

Centre for Migration & Society, Wits University, where she pursues her research

and advocacy interests in feminism, human rights and HIV/AIDS, with a particu-

lar focus on sex work and gender-based violence.

Zia Wasserman’s expertise lies in research, policy development and advocacy. She

holds a BA LLB (University of Cape Town, 2013) and an LLM specialising in

Criminology, Victimology and International Criminal Law (University of Cape

Town, 2015). Zia has worked in the civil society human rights sector since

2016, dedicated to preventing gender-based violence, challenging carceral

criminal justice and promoting sex work issues. In 2018, Zia was appointed

as the National Prisons Coordinator at Sonke Gender Justice, spearheading

the prisons reform and sex work decriminalisation projects. During this time,

10 RICHTER ET AL.

International Journal of CRITICAL DIVERSITY STUDIES 3.1 June 2020

Zia has sat on the Steering Committee of several coalitions, including the

Detention Justice Forum, Asijiki Coalition for the Decriminalisation of Sex Work

and the Hate Crimes Working Group.

Ishtar Lakhani has been working as a feminist, activist and trouble-maker in the field

of social justice advocacy for over 15 years. Having received a Masters degree

in Anthropology, her career has ranged from coordinating a radical, feminist

advocacy network for survivors of sexual violence (the 1 in 9 Campaign) to revo-

lutionary sandwich-making in her founding of Love and Revolution, an activist

bookstore, sandwich shop and community space. As the Advocacy and Human

Rights Defence Manager at the Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce,

she and her team advocated for the human rights of sex workers and cam-

paigned for the full decriminalisation of sex work in South Africa. Currently, Ishtar

is a Free Radical who collaborates with a range of social justice organisations,

movements and networks in providing support to strengthen their approaches to

human rights advocacy. Her passion lies in creative activism facilitation and the

experimental melding of fantasy and reality, of art and activism, in an attempt to

imagine and enact what a more equal and just world might look like.

ABSTRACT

Whorephobia is the fear or hatred of sex workers. Whorephobia manifests in

various ways in ofcial legislation, popular consciousness, the medical literature,

law enforcement and public responses to sex work. All aspects of sex work are

fully criminalised following its origins in archaic colonial law. International and

local literature has documented how the criminal law on adult, consensual sex

work renders sex workers vulnerable to murder, rape, exploitation and other

forms of violence, while increasing their risk of HIV and other forms of ill health.

This vulnerability impacts directly on public health, while making society less

safe. Deeply worryingly, recent recommendations from the South African Law

Reform Commission (2017) urged the Department of Justice to maintain this

status quo.

This article explores whorephobia in the South African context through two case

studies of violence in Cape Town in 2013: the high-prole criminal case of the artist

Zwelethu Mthethwa who kicked sex worker Nokuphila Kumalo to death, and Tim

Osrin’s assault of domestic worker Cynthia Joni. The analysis provides a critique

of the power structures created by the criminal law and draws on the theoretical

framework of stigma-mitigating strategies within sex work developed by Weitzer.

We conclude by arguing that the criminal law supports the radical dehumanisation

of sex workers which contributes to manifestations of extreme hatred in the form of

hate crimes and torture.

KEYWORDS

Sex work, hate crimes, whorephobia, South Africa, stigma