State as pimp: Sexual slavery in South Africa

Abstract

The disturbing prevalence of sexual slavery in South Africa is variously attributed to extreme poverty, unemployment, war, lack of food, and traditional practices that make it acceptable to treat women as commodities. Such 'causes' are better understood as enabling conditions. The demand for sex workers, organised criminal syndicates and the failure of legal imagination are the real drivers of the South African market. The authors address this failure of legal imagination and suggest how the constitutional prohibition against slavery can be used to develop a legal doctrine of sexual slavery, as well as on appropriate set of remedies, that will assist the State in its efforts to eradicate sexual trafficking.