Sex workers of the world, untie!

The skande unleashed by the hooker's blog would have been the South African equivalent of "Hollywood Madam" Heidi Fleiss's little black book - except that none of the local schlebs named as having indulged in the pleasures of paid flesh have quite the same stellar status as Fleiss's A-list clientele.

And except that the retired hooker refuses to divulge his name, which totally undermines the believability of his vindictive crusade on the blog.

Just what is it about the allegations that titillates or outrages us?

Is it that the "forbidden fruit" is a criminal act - albeit one that has over recent years flourished as the police turned a blind eye?

Is it that of all industrial relations, the contract between sex workers and their clients are subject to special scrutiny because it involves unmentionables?

Is it because the sexual relations concerned are homosexual, an orientation that, despite being constitutionally endorsed, is still often publicly condemned? Or is it rather that our society has always secretly embraced the profitable prostitution business, but that the blogger's revelations are considered an outrage against the usual "gentleman's pact" of silence?

It reminds me of a similar scandal in Durban in 1989, when the vice squad raided the Smugglers' Inn strip joint-cum-whorehouse on Point Road and released a list of clients to the press. The Natal Mercury declined to publish, pretending it was indecent to "name and shame", while the Daily News published the list, pretending it took no delight in doing so.

Both newspapers were infected with a duplicitous morality that continues to dog the question of prostitution.

Over the years, my work has seen me befriend several prostitutes.

Most were sad people; a few were vicious; many were really nice. The one I remember most clearly was named Aditi. Rake-thin, she cast a mournful shadow under the streetlights. Her room in a run-down hotel had only a rickety cupboard containing a few tatty glad-rags, a cheap dressing-table strewn with knick-knacks and a bed with a pink crocheted bedspread. Is it because most prostitutes are working-class that they are treated with such disdain, even by the Left?

Attempts to organise sex workers along union lines have proved difficult.

A street-walkers' association in Durban in the early 1990s failed, and I'm not aware of similar attempts in Gauteng, leaving the advocacy group the Sex Workers' Education and Advisory Taskforce (Sweat), of Cape Town, as the only organisation speaking out for sex workers in South Africa.

The trouble is that Sweat's voice is being ignored, says Vivienne Lalu, its training co-ordinator. While the new legal code against pimping children and the mentally disabled is welcome, pending legislation on adult sex workers hasn't moved beyond the criminalisation of the trade enshrined in the starchy Sexual Offences Act of 1957.

Lalu says Sweat's argument is that criminalising sex work violates the right of consenting adults to sexual freedom: "It is not the role of the law to police people's morality. Instead, it should regulate the industry to prevent abuses."

In 1995, the United States-based Industrial Workers of the World formed the "Sex Trade Workers' Industrial Union No 690".

The problem was that, as historian JD Crutchfield has argued, "Workers in several industries use sexuality as their primary tool, including entertainment, personal services and hospitality.

"Organising all sex workers into a single union would separate them from fellow workers in those industries, isolating and weakening them."

The union was more a political statement "about the dignity or validity of sex work. Arguably, it failed to achieve even that goal, for, by segregating all sex workers into a special [industrial union], the organisation reinforced the notion that sex work is fundamentally different from other types of work."

Our unions should, I believe, recruit sex workers to their relevant industrial sections, especially now that they are starting to recognise the need to recruit from the underclass of, dare I say it, flexible labour. Perhaps the old slogan should be reworked: "Sex workers of the world, untie!"