South African children are mostly trafficked within the nation from poor rural areas to urban areas such as Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Durban, and Johannesburg. They face forced labor in street vending, food service, begging, criminal activities, and agriculture or are subjected to sex trafficking and involuntary domestic servitude. The tradition of
ukuthwala
—the forced marriage of girls as young as 12 to adult men—is still practiced in remote villages in the Eastern Cape. This leaves the girls vulnerable to forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. NGOs estimate that 60 percent of the trafficking victims in South Africa are children (U.S. Department of State, 2010). One example of child trafficking within South Africa involved children—some as young as 13—trafficked from Mossel Bay and Upington to Cape Town by a man named Boere and forced to work at fruit and flower stands without pay (Donne, 2007). Since the case against Boere took place after the Children’s Act was signed into law but before it came into effect on April 1, 2010, police had to charge him with other related offenses. The initial charge of abduction was soon dropped because some of the parents had given Boere consent to transport their children to Cape Town. “He is now free to keep bringing in children who then end up on the street,” Sandra Morreira, director of the nonprofit group the Homestead Projects for Street Children and chair of the Western Cape Street Children’s Forum, told the
Cape Argus
(Donne, 2007). According to Solomons, without a comprehensive anti-trafficking law prosecutors charge offenders with trafficking-related offenses, which is limiting and also makes it a challenge to prosecute those whose who did not commit the actual trafficking but were part of the scheme. “There is very little protection against child trafficking besides charging [perpetrators] for offenses such as kidnapping, sexual assault and child labor,” Solomons told the
Cape Argus
(Donne, 2007).
Local gangs compete with international organized crime syndicates for control of both the local drug trade and the trafficking of children in South Africa. The gangs give out local loans, and when debtors are unable to repay, their children are forced to work off the debt through commercial sexual exploitation or drug trafficking (NPA/HSRC, 2010). Ndifonka said that a critical step in the anti-trafficking process is to raise awareness among parents and children. “The purpose of such campaigns is to ensure that children and their parents are equipped to ask the right questions and recognize the warning signs of opportunities that might lead them into a trafficking situation, regardless of its nature.”
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According to Carol Bews, the large population of children who are on their own because their parents are ill with HIV or have died of AIDS are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse:
HIV and AIDS are quite a concern in South Africa. Children of those infected and ill are in an incredibly vulnerable position. There are at least 25,000 children who have received services from community-based organizations in our area of operation. In terms of all of South Africa, it is estimated that there are 4 million orphaned and vulnerable children. These children often have to nurse their parents through the late stages of AIDS or have been orphaned. There are children as young as four and five wandering around the community on their own. We don’t have protocol to deal with missing children or safeguards to protect them. So children are often kidnapped for a variety of reasons, including human trafficking. Traditionally in more rural areas there is more of a sense of community where people take care of each other, but in the urban areas it is really just survival for these children.
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In some rural areas of South Africa muti (or muthi) killings are performed to obtain human body parts for use in ritual practices. The rituals are believed to bring wealth and fertility. One victim of a muti killing was a 10-year-old girl named Kgomo Masego whose mutilated body was found hidden in the bushes near the train station. A
sangoma
(shaman) and six other persons were charged with her abduction, rape, and murder. There was conflicting testimony about whether her womb and breasts were removed before she was strangled. Her body parts were sold for $604.70 (SAPA, 2011). The suspects are allegedly tied to similar murders of three other young girls. Officials believe that all the girls were killed for the use of their body parts in muti (SANews, 2010a; Hosken, 2010). Another case involved the murder of nine women in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Each woman was missing body parts such as ears, tongues, breasts, and genitalia. Some of the women had been raped before they were murdered. One of the alleged murderers was a
sangoma
(SANews, 2010a).
In response to muti murders, the Department of Women, Children, Youth, and People with Disabilities met with the National Traditional Healers Organization in 2010 to determine how to halt this form of trafficking and the demand for human body parts. “There have been some localized initiatives to either understand or respond to the problem,” said department spokesperson Sibani Mngadi. “We need to understand this problem from a national perspective as it has affected many areas in the country and find appropriate solutions” (SANews, 2010a). Nceba Gqaleni, chair of the Indigenous Health Care Systems Research Department at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, says that muti murders form part of the human trafficking in South Africa. He also states that healers are horrified that this crime is committed in the name of traditional medicine. “Traditional healers that I work with have expressed disgust,” Gqaleni said. “They do not have the mechanisms to deal with this. To use a body part as medicine is criminal, it is not traditional healing. Good intelligence gathering to understand what drives and motivates it and who is behind it is needed” (SANews, 2010a).
Members of the Traditional Healers’ Association of Mozambique (AMETRAMO) believe that persons who use human body parts in their rituals are not traditional healers but instead scam artists who exploit desperate persons. “There are crooks, who are not traditional healers, [who] commit several atrocities like the extraction of human organs; sometimes even after extracting the human organs they take the body of the victim to the railroad to simulate a running over by the train,” a group of AMETRAMO traditional healers told Human Rights League interviewers (Fellows, 2008: p. 19).
One reality that anti-trafficking advocates face is the strong community belief in traditional medicine. Raising community awareness on the issue of muti murders and how to distinguish between an authentic healer and extortionists can be achieved only with the help of traditional healers. “People don’t talk about it openly,” Carol Bews said. “But what is true is that if someone believes in a traditional healer they will consult with a healer before they will implement any recommendation from a social worker, service provider, or even doctor. People turn to healers for guidance, and there is a high level of trust and belief in what they promulgate. Healers can access the community far better than we can.” The collaboration between healers and child advocates has been successful in other arenas. Jo’burg Child Welfare has partnered with local traditional healers to raise community awareness on the topic of AIDS. “There used to be a belief that a person could be cleansed of HIV through sex,” Bews said. “By building a relationship with traditional healers we have been able to spread the word in Johannesburg on how to protect oneself and stop the spread of HIV. The healers that we work with are a positive group of people. Those persons who do muti murders are a different group.”
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Nde Ndifonka agrees with Bews’ sentiment that in order to bring awareness to a community, NGOs must work with those who are trusted within the community: “Culture is a way of life. Hence awareness-raising activities in communities where there are practices that perpetuate human trafficking would have to be well designed to demonstrate the harm to those within the community. This can be difficult, as the message must come from those [who] are trusted within the community, and is not always well-received by outsiders.”
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Gérard Labuschagne of the South African Police Services (SAPS) Investigative Psychology Unit says that some South African provinces, such as Limpopo, have responded to muti trafficking by creating task teams specifically designed to focus on this type of murder (SANews, 2010a). Experts believe that most muti murders go unreported and estimate that somewhere between 12 and 300 muti killings occur per year. Determining accurate data on the number of muti murders that occur in South Africa per year is hindered not only by the lack of reporting but also by the fact that crime statistics in the nation do not differentiate among types of murder (Dynes, 2003; Labuschagne, 2004). Additionally, depending on when the body is found, it can be difficult to determine whether a murder was committed to obtain body parts because of decomposition before the body is found. Labuschagne said, “Predators may eat a body, destroying wound sites and mutilation that might be a result of … mutilation for non–muti related purposes” (SANews, 2010a).
The human body parts used in traditional medicine in South Africa often come from persons killed there or in Mozambique. As an interviewee stated in the 2008 report
Trafficking Body Parts in Mozambique and South Africa
, ritual killings are common in South Africa. “It’s like a daily bread. We do not even get shocked when a person is missing and found dead with body parts removed. … body parts sale is common here” (Fellows, 2008: p. 29). One case in which a muti murder occurred in Mozambique for trafficking body parts to South Africa is that of a 10-year-old boy who was followed home and murdered. His organs were extracted and his body discarded in a river. The boy’s body lacked his head, heart, kidneys, and genitalia. The body parts were never found. Community members believe that the body parts were bound for a Zion Christian Church in South Africa (Fellows, 2008: p. 19).
One interviewee for the report on trafficking body parts said that she witnessed at least three to four cases per month along the Mozambique–South African border, where the body parts were being transported into South Africa: “And it does get a lot worse at the end of November and in December. People want more money in these months. … In December there are a lot more people crossing and the control is much worse. … The people that cross these things have their schemes—they know who is going to be working, and at what time they will be working, to let them cross” (Fellows, 2008: p. 24). The interviewee went on to describe three specific cases of attempted body-parts trafficking that she witnessed in October 2008. All three were caught by the South African border patrol:
The first case happened at the beginning of October. The police border [patrol] caught male and female sexual organs from adults hidden in the middle of Matapa leaves. A 40-something lady was carrying the bag with those inside. The second case was in middle October. A lady … was caught carrying a head and the sexual organ of a male child … around 10 years old. She was carrying several bags with several things inside and she [hid] the material inside plastic bags with ice on the middle of the food. The third case, it was [at] the end of October, around 2 weeks ago. A man … was carrying meat inside a freezer bag. At the bottom [hidden] were 5 male genital organs from adult men. The police border [patrol] opened the freezer bag and asked him where he was taking all that meat and started searching until he found that. (Fellows, 2008: p. 24)
The motivation for customers who participate in rituals or “treatments” that utilize human body parts is the belief that traditional medicine is more powerful when it contains human body parts. Customers often turn to healers to help them obtain wealth or to cure a problem such as infertility. One client in South Africa stated that she was instructed by a
sangoma
to use a belt of children’s fingers and penises in order to cure her infertility. She was also given a concoction to drink—which she believes contained blood from a human—and a piece of flesh that seemed to be from a human organ. As instructed she sliced, cooked, and ate pieces of the flesh daily. She paid the healer $542 for these items: “I went to that sangoma and he gave me muti to drink, a mixture of herbs—and another muti that I had to burn at night. You could see that it was like a heart from a person. That muti to drink, it was three bottles. Those bottles when I was drinking that muti, it looked like blood. I don’t know what to say, because when I was drinking I wanted to vomit. I wanted to vomit that muti. I was starting to be scared. I thought I cannot drink this” (Fellows, 2008: p. 26). When asked where the fingers and genitalia came from, the client answered, “They kill babies.” The researchers asked the woman whether she questioned the healer regarding the contents of the muti. She responded, “No, I was so desperate. I was so sick, so sick … that if someone told me to go to the toilet and eat I would do it” (Fellows, 2008: p. 27).
Researchers conducted 139 interviews for the 2008 report on trafficking body parts. The interviews revealed 43 cases of alleged body-parts trafficking in South Africa. Fourteen cases occurred in Mpumalanga—7 of which were firsthand accounts and 7 of which were hearsay; 17 cases occurred in Limpopo—4 firsthand accounts and 13 hearsay; 9 cases occurred in the Free State—4 firsthand reports and 5 hearsay; and 3 hearsay accounts occurred in KwaZulu-Natal (Fellows, 2008: 32). As in India and China, in South Africa there is little to no follow-up from police in cases of missing persons. In the case of a colleague who suddenly went missing, one social service provider quickly found the police of minimal help in investigating the case. “When she went missing, it was left to her family and us to do the follow-up, not the police,” the anonymous source said.
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CHILD SEX TOURISM, SOUTH AFRICA AS A TRANSIT NATION, AND TRAFFICKING ABROAD
The primary destinations for child sex tourism in South Africa are Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town, where the persons prostituted are predominantly children between 10 and 14 years of age (NPA/HSRC, 2010). Many of the victims are children recruited from rural towns in South Africa. Child prostitution in the cities is believed to be run by local criminal rings and street gangs (U.S. Department of State, 2009, 2010). South Africa is also a transit nation for human trafficking. Persons from China, Lesotho, Malawi, and Swaziland are trafficked through South Africa (Independent Online, 2007). To a lesser extent, citizens of South Africa are trafficked to Ireland, Israel, Macao, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the United States, and Zimbabwe for sexual exploitation and forced labor. The IOM identified eight recorded cases of South African citizens trafficked abroad between 2004 and 2008 (U.S. Department of State, 2010; NPA/HSRC, 2010). In a 2010 case, South African men were recruited by local employment agencies to drive taxis in the UAE. When they arrived in November 2009 they were placed in a labor camp. The workers had responded to a newspaper ad and were told by the recruitment agent that they would be paid $2,423.63 per month. Copies of one driver’s pay slips showed that he barely earned $54 per shift and worked multiple back-to-back shifts. Deducted from the wages was the cost of living in the labor camp, roughly $200 per month. The
National
reported that the 20 cab drivers, now back in South Africa, and the cab company settled. It is unclear what this means and if the exploitation rose to the level of human trafficking (Kwong, 2010; U.S. Department of State, 2010).