A sex worker gestures flirtatiously to passing men as she stands outside a dilapidated multi-storey building on Nugget Street in Johannesburg’s Hillbrow area.
“It’s not like a hotel, [there are] no bookings. They just come, we do business and they leave,” she said while waiting to do “business”. It has been a slow day, she added.
Amanda was 15 when she started work in the sex trade; she is now 27.
“If someone wants to come work here they can just pitch up,” she said, referring to the building where a room is shared by many women to earn an income through selling sex.
Although she knows prostitution is illegal in South Africa, she has been selling sex on the streets of Hillbrow for 12 years. The government’s proposed Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Bill gives little to no relief for her.
The Bill, open for public comment, repeals the Sexual Offences Act and section 11 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act to decriminalise the sale and purchase of adult sexual services.
The amended bill, which the cabinet approved at the end of last year, also expunges criminal records of people convicted of, participating in, rendering or receiving adult sexual services. The department of justice and correctional services did not respond to a Mail & Guardian question on exactly how the expungement would be done.
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