PROSECUTIONS boss Mokotedi Mpshe should play no role in deciding whether sex work should be legalised, insists the sex-workers’ NGO Sweat.

Sweat (Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Task Force) were reacting to his suggestion that legalising the industry would be bad for the country’s morals and lead to sex becoming a career.

They said they were dismayed as Mpshe’s view was short sighted, and failed to take note of either the realities on the ground or the respect for human rights enshrined in the Constitution.

PROSECUTIONS boss Mokotedi Mpshe should play no role in deciding whether sex work should be legalised, insists the sex-workers’ NGO Sweat.

Sweat (Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Task Force) were reacting to his suggestion that legalising the industry would be bad for the country’s morals and lead to sex becoming a career.

They said they were dismayed as Mpshe’s view was short sighted, and failed to take note of either the realities on the ground or the respect for human rights enshrined in the Constitution.

“The criminalisation of sex work does not stop it from being a career,” Sweat director Eric Harper said. “It only makes it a career filled with insecurity, abuse and harassment.”

Vivienne Lalu, Sweat’s advocacy programme co-ordinator, said she would have expected Mpshe, who is acting head of the National Prosecuting Authority, to comment on the difficulties prosecutors had in enforcing existing laws on sex work and to make sound legal recommendations.

“Instead, his comments were limited to his personal moral views on the matter.”

While Sweat respected people’s right to hold a Christian moral view – which was essentially what Mpshe had been expressing – SA was a secular State, and it was inappropriate that those views should be enshrined in the country’s laws.

She said the services of sex workers were in any case already widely available throughout the country, advertised in daily newspapers, magazines and on the Internet.

“To some extent there is a de facto decriminalisation situation already because the criminal law hardly ever gets used,” she said.

Sweat quoted an anonymous Cape Town female sex worker as commenting on Mpshe’s remarks by saying she gave men pleasure and they gave her money to feed her children and put them through school. “The prosecutor says my job is immoral, but is it not immoral to stop me feeding and educating my children?”

Sweat said it would be making a detailed submission to the SA Law Reform Commission on its recently released discussion paper on adult prostitution, and encouraged sex workers to do the same.

The African Christian Democratic Party welcomed what it said was Mpshe’s “serious note of caution” on attempts to decriminalise sex work. — Sapa

Sources:

• Dispatch Online – East London,Eastern Cape,South Africa
• http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=6&click_id=2871&art_id=vn20090519051627916C780266 – where the quote came from
• http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20090513112008650C337742 – the legalisation debate happening now
• http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20090428052051747C399522 – SWEAT’s work to get the political ball rolling on this question
• http://www.citizenjournalismafrica.org/node/1589 – Eric Haper (SWEAT) comments on it