http://www.smh.com.au/news/0009/09/world/world19.html
Child sex slavery booms
By ED O'LOUGHLIN, Herald Correspondent in Johannesburg,
Sydney Morning Herald, 09/09/2000
Inadequate laws, collapsing families and HIV/AIDS have
combined to make South Africa one of the world's worst centres
for child abuse and child sex slavery, an international conference
in Durban heard this week.
A number of activists speaking at the 13th International
Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect told delegates how
children as young as four were being traded as sex slaves or
prostitutes, often changing hands in what amounted to latter-day
slave markets.
According to a report from a Cape Town children's organisation,
Molo Songololo (Xhosa slang for "hello luck"), many of the
children are smuggled in from other African states while some
are known to come from eastern Europe and Thailand. Many
others are South African children orphaned by AIDS, while some
are sold into slavery by members of their own families.
Ms Bernadette van Vuuren, of Molo Songololo, told the
conference that children as young as eight were being smuggled
in from Mozambique and sold to South Africans for between 300
and 500 rand a child ($75 to $125).
Leading members of society, including politicians, police and
senior professionals were involved in the trade as customers and
suppliers.
There was also evidence of growing "sex tourism" by people
taking advantage of weak legislation, poor law enforcement and
the cheap and abundant supply of vulnerable children.
According to Ms Van Vuuren, international crime syndicates
based in Nigeria, China, Israel and Russia have become involved
in the South African trade. The United Nations estimates that up
to 4million people are traded as slaves each year, the bulk of them
children.
The South African organisation Childline told the conference that
children as young as eight were being abducted from parts of
Durban's rural hinterland and taken to the city. Chained up in
shacks, they were eventually sold on to adults.
According to Ms Jacqueline Loffell, of the Johannesburg Child
Welfare Society, more than 40,000 cases of child abuse were
recorded by police in South Africa last year.
This means that, according to official figures, two children were
being raped every hour. The real figure was likely to be even
higher, she said, since the police figures do not include the rape of
boys.
Experts agree that southern Africa's epidemic of HIV/AIDS is
playing a large role in the growing wave of child prostitution, rape
and slavery. With up to one adult South African in five carrying
the AIDS virus, thousands of newly orphaned children are being
abandoned each year - the UN estimates that the total number of
AIDS orphans in the country could be as high as 5million by the
year 2010.
Many are forced to trade sex for survival.
According to Childline's director, Ms Joan van Niekerk, demand
for its welfare services is in turn boosted by a popular superstition
that AIDS can be cured by sleeping with a virgin or with a child.
"We have definitely come across children whose HIV status can
be related to this belief," she told the conference.
Other adults choose to have sex with children because they
believe it is less likely that they will already be infected with
HIV/AIDS. It is usually the children who become infected as a
result.
Ms Van Niekerk said her organisation had encountered children
as young as two who had contracted HIV through abuse. She
gave the example of one three-year-old boy who contracted
HIV during prolonged sexual abuse by a 17-year-old female
child minder. No charges could be brought because of gaps in the
law.
For many orphaned or abducted children sexual abuse can come
hand in hand with slave labour.
Ms Dudu Dlamini, a researcher at the University of the
Witwatersrand, told the conference that more than 200,000
children as young as eight were working as labourers on South
African farms alone, often for no more than food or lodging.
Those who are paid usually receive only about R12 a day for
performing the same work as adults.
Most of the children are refugees or illegal immigrants or are
themselves the children of agricultural wage slaves. Few are
provided with basic education or welfare and their living
conditions are often appalling.
According to Ms Dlamini, the system often forces young girls to
give themselves as "wives" to older men, or else face expulsion
from the farm.
She had spoken to one pregnant 12-year-old who had been
forced to work 10 hours a day and then to cook and care for her
"husband".
More than 1,000 delegates from more than 60 countries came to
share information about ways to combat child abuse, with many
calling for tighter laws to prevent and punish the international
trade in child labour and sex.
