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RUEHC/DEPT OF LABOR WASHDC
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RHMFIUU/DEPT OF HOMELAND SECURITY WASHINGTON DC
RUEAWJA/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHINGTON DC

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 08 PRETORIA 000289 
 
SIPDIS 
SENSITIVE 
 
DEPT FOR AF/S, AF/RSA; G/TIP FOR STEPHANIE KRONENBURG; 
G-LAURA PENA, INL, DRL, PRM 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL SF KTIP KCRM PHUM KWMN SMIG KFRD
ASEC, PREF, ELAB, KMCA 
SUBJECT: PRETORIA INPUTS TO THE 2010 TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS 
(TIP) REPORT -- PART 1 OF 3 
 
REF: A. STATE 02094 
     ¶B. PRETORIA 1551 
     ¶C. PRETORIA 2016 
     ¶D. PRETORIA 2229 
     ¶E. PRETORIA 2567 
     ¶F. PRETORIA 2671 
 
 
------- 
Summary 
------- 
 
¶1.  Post hereby submits responses to the Department's action 
request (ref A) for the tenth annual Trafficking in Persons 
(TIP) Report, covering the period from mid-February 2009 
through mid-February 2010.  Following an overview of South 
Africa's counter-trafficking efforts, and of its unique 
capacity challenges as a 15-year-old emerging democracy, 
responses in paragraphs 7-15 correspond to reftel's 
paragraphs 25-35 of specific questions.  Paragraphs 16-19 
below then list sources, Post contributors, time spent, and 
TIP contact at post.  End Summary. 
 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
Overview: Major Milestones Ahead -- TIP Law, World Cup 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
 
¶2.  Per Post's reporting through the year (Refs B-F), the 
South African government (SAG) is committed to combating the 
scourge of human trafficking.  Political will does exist at 
the national level, and the typically glacial pace of 
government progress has been helpfully prodded by advocacy 
from civil society groups and international media attention. 
The 2009-10 reporting period was dominated by preparations 
for two significant hurdles -- enactment of a comprehensive 
Trafficking Law, and hosting of the FIFA World Cup -- due to 
be passed in 2010. 
 
¶3.  On the legislative front, the SAG's counter-trafficking 
Bill has been in a protracted gestation phase, which is at 
last due to yield a formal TIP Law in 2010.  The legislation 
and its associated interagency procedures have been in the 
works for some years now, including via repeated rounds of 
public consultation.  (Note: South Africa's slow lawmaking 
process is aggravating to outside observers, but the TIP 
Bill's long development is common, even for high priority 
"fast track" initiatives.  End Note.) By year-end 2009, the 
SAG's executive branch had completed its draft, for the 
Minister of Justice to submit to Parliament at its opening 
session in February 2010.  With three parliamentary 
committees acting as midwives, the question is not whether 
the law will be born, but only how long and arduous will be 
the labor.  Among our sources, predictions for the law's 
passage range from March to November, either of which may be 
correct.  The law will establish mandates, provide budgets, 
and initiate coordination of public and private action to 
combat TIP.  (Many TIP discussions are predicated on it: 
"Once the law is passed, we will be able to....") 
 
¶4.  The 2010 World Cup in South Africa continues to be an 
important catalyst for TIP awareness and prevention activity. 
 The SAG has drafted a Child Protection Strategy at national 
level, and it tasked each province hosting a World Cup game 
to write a plan for child protection and TIP prevention. 
Qto write a plan for child protection and TIP prevention. 
These plans were successfully tested during the 2009 
Confederations Cup (precursor to World Cup), when post was 
not aware of any cases of TIP linked to the games.  The more 
nimble civil society sector has been energetic in its concern 
for children, who may be vulnerable while schools are closed 
during the games.  An anti-TIP consortium of of NGOs in 
Western Cape province (ref C), the Nelson Mandela Children's 
Fund (ref F), local and global church networks, and countless 
other local organizations are mobilized around child 
protection.  These independent initiatives lack a single 
 
PRETORIA 00000289  002.2 OF 008 
 
 
point of national coordination, hence they may have both gaps 
and overlaps, but they illustrate how factors like the 
pending TIP Bill, long-running grass-roots advocacy, and a 
World Cup driven spike in media attention have created a 
"buzz" around TIP in 2009.  That buzz has in turn put 
constructive pressure on the SAG to pass the TIP Bill, for 
which the SAG does have a sense of urgency. 
 
------------------------------------------- 
Context: Great Need, But Fledgling Capacity 
------------------------------------------- 
 
¶5.  Classed as a 'middle income' economy, South Africa is 
often mistaken for a uniformly first-world, developed nation, 
without a full appreciation of the magnitude of its 
challenges and constraints in combating crime and social 
ills.  Income distribution is highly skewed, with a very 
small segment of concentrated affluence amid a wider 
population of which more than half live below the poverty 
line.  Its very status as a world-class tourism destination, 
with extensive transport links serving as a regional hub, 
combine with its wide income disparities to create especially 
fertile ground for TIP. 
 
¶6.  As a 15-year-old democracy, the SAG is still in its 
infancy, struggling to extend governance and protections to 
the majority of its citizens who were woefully neglected 
under apartheid.  Legislative frameworks on rights and 
justice are in the process of fundamental overhaul, yet the 
shortfall in implementation capacity is estimated on the 
order of several hundred thousand mid-level workers.  The SAG 
particularly lacks the skilled workers it needs to implement 
programs, and government salaries are low.  Members of 
Parliament have no professionally trained staff; SAG 
departments are massively overstretched; police are expanding 
but still strained; and social workers are in desperately 
short supply.  A very dynamic civil society sector helps to 
bridge some of the gaps, creating a vibrant and vocal but 
often patchy advocacy community.  It is in this context of 
transitional democracy -- wholly committed but nascent and 
still largely underdeveloped -- that South Africa's efforts 
should be judged. 
 
------------- 
TIP Situation 
------------- 
 
¶7. (Responses to paragraph 25 of Ref A.) 
 
-- A.  Sources of information on TIP were dispersed, since 
many groups addressed the issue.  With a range of SAG 
agencies, IOs, NGOs, faith based organizations (FBOs), and 
community groups (CBOs) confronting different aspects of the 
problem, there was no central repository of qualitative 
information and no source of statistical data.  While a wide 
array of anti-TIP efforts were underway in South Africa, the 
majority of those were not publicized or published, and 
information had to be gathered primarily through in-person 
meetings.  The counterparts interviewed by post for this 
year's TIP Report are listed in paragraph 16.  Post believes 
these sources were reliable, in the sense of being truthful, 
Qthese sources were reliable, in the sense of being truthful, 
but their information was likely to be incomplete, given the 
underground nature of TIP and the many diverse groups 
fighting it.  Documentation of TIP will improve after this 
year with the pending passage of TIP legislation, generating 
formal requirements for parliamentary reporting and statutes 
for compiling crime statistics. 
 
-- B.  South Africa was a country of origin, transit, and 
destination for women, children, and men trafficked 
internally (domestically) and internationally across its 
borders.  (The country had no ungoverned territory or civil 
war.)  Domestically, victims were largely trafficked from 
poor rural areas to urban centers like Johannesburg, Cape 
 
PRETORIA 00000289  003.2 OF 008 
 
 
Town, Durban, and Bloemfontein.  For a detailed list of 
primary locations and a map of main domestic trafficking 
routes, see pages 32-33 of the IOM's October 2008 report, "No 
Experience Necessary: The Internal Trafficking of Persons in 
South Africa" of research funded by USAID (Ref C; 
http://iom.org.za under "publications").  These patterns 
remained valid in 2009. 
 
Among international victims, countries of origin can be 
partly inferred from the 306 victims directly assisted by IOM 
from January 2004 to January 2010.  These were a mix of 
persons from Asia and neighboring countries of Southern 
Africa -- most of them Thai (153), as well as Congolese (36), 
Zimbabwean (29), Mozambican (20), Indian (12), and Chinese 
(11).  According to the NPA, Chinese traffickers made 
Johannesburg a regional hub for collecting victims from 
Lesotho, Mozambique, and Swaziland, for exploitation locally 
and in other cities.  Trafficking into South Africa from 
neighboring Angola, Mozambique, Congo, and Zimbabwe was 
believed to be on the rise.  From more distant countries, 
however, it may be falling: the flow of trafficked Thai women 
appeared to slow in 2009 (perhaps due to successful pressure 
by law enforcement, made aware of this segment in recent 
years), while the demand for Eastern European women for sex 
work in exclusive private men's clubs was now being met by 
willing prostitutes rather than TIP victims. 
 
Women are trafficked out of South Africa mainly to Europe and 
the Far East (albeit in relatively small numbers compared to 
the internal trade), for commercial sexual exploitation at 
clubs in the U.K. or Ireland, or domestic work then followed 
by sexual exploitation.  Nigerian syndicates, who have the 
strongest grip on TIP inside South Africa, have reportedly 
begun moving trafficked women to the U.S. as well, targeting 
African migrant clients there. 
 
The IOM study catalogued five main purposes of internal TIP: 
commercial sexual exploitation (both male and female), 
domestic servitude (girls), agricultural labor (boys), street 
work (vending, begging, and crime), and a perversion of 
"muthi" (which broadly means traditional medicine, but in 
this context organ removal for use in such medicine).  Both 
internally and internationally, commercial sexual 
exploitation was the primary purpose, to which the sources 
and destinations described above refer.  According to the 
South African Department of Labor (SADOL), ethnic Chinese 
(from PRC or ROC) laborers were trafficked to sweatshop 
factories in Chinese urban enclaves in South Africa.  These 
operations were highly organized and mobile to evade labor 
inspectors, even moving in and out of neighboring Lesotho and 
Swaziland to avoid arrest.  While SADOL acknowledged that 
Mozambican or Zimbabwean men and children were exploited by 
labor brokers in South Africa for farm work, SADOL 
characterized this as a localized abuse of migrants already 
seeking work in the area, rather than TIP per se.  The South 
Qseeking work in the area, rather than TIP per se.  The South 
African Police Service (SAPS)' TIP officer also described 
exploitative farm labor in border areas as smuggling more 
than TIP. 
 
There were no available estimates of the numbers of TIP 
victims in South Africa, but numbers were believed to be 
high.  Patterns of TIP destinations and purposes in 2009 were 
consistent with those reported in prior years.  New brothels 
have proliferated near football stadiums in advance of the 
2010 FIFA World Cup.  Many of these new venues have 
undertaken recruitment drives -- for willing sex workers and 
probably newly groomed TIP victims as well -- and were fully 
staffed during the peak year-end holiday season, ready to 
cater to visiting football fans. 
 
-- C.  Victims faced conditions of confinement, intimidation, 
and abuse.  For example, in the domestic servitude TIP trade, 
the IOM study recounts that girls in the Western Cape were 
bused to big cities, then corralled into small holding rooms 
 
PRETORIA 00000289  004.2 OF 008 
 
 
of 20-30 girls, and paraded before prospective employers 
until "purchased."  Once brought to work in a private home, 
many were subject to abuse (including sexual) by employers, 
and too frightened or ashamed to escape.  Those who fled 
could easily fall prey to sexual traffickers.  On farms, 
laborers were often paid little or nothing to work long hours 
and live in substandard conditions.  Across all categories of 
TIP, traffickers controlled victims through intimidation and 
threats, use of force, confiscation of identity documents to 
discourage escape, demands to pay job "debts," and even 
forced use of drugs and alcohol. 
 
-- D.  South Africans most at risk of becoming trafficking 
victims were mainly poor blacks, from rural areas suffering 
high rates of unemployment and from where wage earners had 
traditionally migrated to cities in search of work.  With 
half the population below the poverty line, and roughly a 
third unemployed (spiking this year due to the economic 
crisis), many who were desperate for work would travel long 
distances to where the economy was more robust.  Economic 
disparities among racial groups and between rural vs. urban 
communities created trafficking opportunities. 
 
The AIDS epidemic in South Africa also increased mobility, 
and hence vulnerability, not just of young men but of women 
and children heads of household.  NGOs such as Khulisa 
estimated that children made up 60 percent of TIP victims in 
South Africa, although kept on farms and in private homes 
these were harder for law enforcement to locate and rescue 
compared to the more easily identifiable foreign women in 
brothels.  A growing population of orphans were vulnerable to 
predatory traffickers for exploitation in crime, labor, or 
the growing demand for younger virgins in a sex trade more 
fearful of HIV/AIDS.  In a culture with some of the world's 
highest rates of rape and gender violence, victims fleeing 
forced marriages or abuse at home could fall prey to TIP. 
 
-- E.  Organized criminal groups including Nigerian, Chinese, 
Thai, Ukranian, and Russian syndicates and local gangs 
facilitated trafficking into, through and within South Africa 
for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation.  Some of 
these syndicates may even have spawned offshoot operations in 
neighboring countries.  International mafias initially 
recruited victims of their own nationalities, but there was 
also secondary "swapping" of victims.  Informed sources 
indicated that Nigerian groups also dominated domestic TIP 
for the sex trade.  The IOM study documented very organized 
regional networks trading in teens and young women for 
domestic servitude, particularly in the Western Cape. 
Smaller, more amateur groups typically operate in other 
labor-related TIP such as farm work or street begging. 
 
Trafficking victims were mostly lured by promises of 
lucrative (and legal) jobs enabling them to better their own 
lives and send money home to their families.  Whereas typical 
Qlives and send money home to their families.  Whereas typical 
victims used to be runaways who fell prey to city pimps, 
nowadays syndicates proactively sent recruiters to rural 
towns.  Recruiters for the sex trade were just as likely to 
be women as men, and often trusted family members, 
acquaintances, or neighbors.  Posing as employment agencies, 
traffickers for domestic labor used job ads in local 
newspapers to lure victims. 
 
-------------------- 
SAG Anti-TIP Efforts 
-------------------- 
 
¶8.  (Responses to paragraph 26 of Ref A.) 
 
-- A.  The SAG acknowledged the TIP problem and had drafted 
comprehensive legislation to combat it.  In the meantime, it 
was using existing and interim legislation to arrest and 
punish perpetrators, commissioning training of officials to 
recognize and address TIP situations, and expanding shelters 
 
PRETORIA 00000289  005.2 OF 008 
 
 
and services to attend to victims. 
 
-- B.  NPA/SOCA had the lead in coordinating SAG 
countertrafficking efforts, both within government and with 
external partners from civil society.  NPA/SOCA chaired a 
Trafficking in Persons Inter-sectoral Task Team whose members 
included the Departments of Justice and Constitutional 
Development (DoJ), Home Affairs (DHA), Labor (SADOL), Social 
Development (DSD), as well as the Organized Crime Unit and 
Ports of Entry Division of the South African Police Service 
(SAPS), the IOM, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 
(UNODC), and local NGO Molo Songololo.  As only a two-person 
team, however, the NPA/SOCA's capacity for outreach and 
coordination was limited.  Sources described South Africa's 
anti-TIP activity as mainly independent, operating-level 
'silos' of action among many public and private actors. 
(Note: TIP responsibility may be elevated to a higher level 
within the SAG upon passage of the law, raising its profile 
and access to resources while likely improving coordination. 
This point is for G/TIP information only, not for 
publication.  End Note.) 
 
As in 2008, the Task Team's primary focus in 2009 was laying 
groundwork to implement the pending law -- promoting 
interagency dialogue and joint planning; formulating 
standards, protocols, and interagency operating procedures 
for the TIP law's implementation; and undertaking extensive 
trainings of TIP concepts, identification, and agency roles. 
NPA/SOCA also supervised contracts for a set of five 
EU-funded anti-TIP initiatives due to run through the end of 
¶2010.  These were: curriculum development (continuing work by 
IOM -- in draft, targeted for completion in August 2010); 
research into TIP trends and support to victims (to be 
managed by the Human Sciences Research Council, and parceled 
to experts in criminology, psycho-sociology, and law); 
awareness raising (given to the International Labor 
Organization's International Training Center -- which will 
compare "before" and "after" measures of TIP awareness, in 
conjunction with school training sessions in pilot sites 
across five provinces); "coordination and cooperation" with 
other countries by the NPA; and monitoring and evaluation 
('M&E'). 
 
-- C.  The key hurdle to the SAG's anti-TIP efforts remained 
comprehensive anti-TIP legislation.  At year-end 2009 the 
SAG's TIP Bill was fully drafted, reviewed by the Cabinet 
(FOUO please), and awaiting handover by the executive 
(Minister of Justice) to the legislative branch (Parliament). 
 The SALRC's first draft of the Bill had been released in 
mid-2008, for public and interagency consultations and 
suggested edits.  Its revised version was submitted to the 
Minister in November 2008.  Parliament was disrupted by 
national elections in April 2009, delaying a possible 
submission to lawmakers.  In July 2009, the Deputy Justice 
Minister told visiting G/TIP Ambassador CdeBaca that the 
government had extended a second round of public commentary 
Qgovernment had extended a second round of public commentary 
to the end of that month, in light of wide and strong 
interest in the TIP issue and an encouragingly high volune of 
public inputs.  The DepMin assured CdeBaca that it was the 
SAG's intent to have the bill in place by 2010, although that 
goal was made more difficult by the abridged parliamentary 
calendar in 2009.  Sources in the Department of Justice (FOUO 
please) told poloff in December that the Minister had shared 
the draft with the Cabinet, as a final step toward submission 
to Parliament. 
 
(Note: although the Department guidance (ref A) excludes 
forward-looking reporting, the Bill passage is likely to come 
to a head around the time the Department's TIP Report goes to 
press.  By all accounts, the Bill will be presented to 
Parliament in February 2010, but opinions vary on how long 
the Parliament could take to pass it.  Parliament officially 
opens in mid-February, but its first week or two are given 
solely to budgetary matters.  The Bill could then be 
 
PRETORIA 00000289  006.2 OF 008 
 
 
submitted by the Justice Minister to his affiliated Justice 
Committee by the end of February.  According to UNODC officer 
Johan Kruger, three separate parliamentary committees -- 
those of Justice, Safety and Security, and Social Development 
-- must debate the Bill.  Kruger will brief MPs from these 
committees on TIP and the Bill, to secure their support and 
speed their deliberations.  Emboffs will coordinate with 
Kruger and parliamentary contacts to attend briefings and 
otherwise lobby key committtee members.  According to Kruger, 
the parliamentary committees may opt to invite further public 
comment, introducing potentially long delays and even 
rewrites to the Bill -- hence this variable will be the key 
determinant of the Bill's progress.  Once the committees 
approve the Bill, it is expected to be passed readily by the 
main chambers.  DoJ sources forecast passage by March/April; 
Kruger himself thought June/July more likely; and IOM was 
most pessimistic, anticipating a vote in the Parliament's 
year-end session circa October/November.  End Note.) 
 
Costing of the Bill was a concern that could become a 
constraint at implementation.  The NPA and SALRC both gave 
assurances that the Bill's costs had been fully forecast. 
SALRC said lessons had been learned from the Children's Act 
(which had been inadequately costed, with the result that it 
was stalled in implementation), and the TIP Bill would not 
suffer the same fate.  ILO and IOM were both skeptical, 
however.  ILO worried whether the SAG would have the capacity 
and funding to sustain the awareness work it had launched, 
and from which ILO would withdraw in February 2010, when 
there was no sign of budgets being allocated in the absence 
of a final TIP law.  IOM said it had only been contacted by 
costing consultants late in 2009, when the Bill was already 
drafted, and they saw the effort as rushed and cursory. 
 
Other important limitations included capacity of SAPS, NPA, 
and Social Development to pursue all cases and attend to all 
victims, given insufficient police and prosecutors, and 
chronic shortfalls among the ranks of social workers.  At 
SAPS and NPA the problem was less one of funding, and more 
one of these services struggling to build sufficient staff 
with adequate skills for their dramatically expanded 
responsibilities in the post-1994 aftermath of apartheid.  At 
DSD, budgets had been cut in 2009, and social workers' 
salaries equivalent to US$ 400 per month could not compete 
with the private sector. 
 
Awareness of TIP-related law, ability to apply it in 
identifying cases, and confident knowledge in appropriate 
measures to take were also still lacking, hampering the 
responses of police and immigration officers, since only a 
minority had yet been exposed to counter-TIP training.  Some 
police officers were said to receive bribes from crime 
syndicates, or failed to pursue criminals out of fear of 
reprisals, or preferred to deport victims as a shortcut 
Qreprisals, or preferred to deport victims as a shortcut 
compared to opening a TIP investigation, particularly given 
language barriers.  There was no evidence of large-scale 
corruption or official collaboration with traffickers, but 
the large sums of money generated by the trade was believed 
to fund localized corruption. 
 
-- D.  The SAG did not yet have a systematic mechanism for 
monitoring and reporting the anti-trafficking efforts of its 
own agencies and external partners.  There were plans to 
incorporate TIP tracking into a data base of justice and 
crime prevention called "e-justice."  The latter would track 
investigations, prosecutions, and victims, across SAPS, NPA, 
DHA, SADOL, and DSD.  In 2008, e-justice was expected to be 
two to three years in development.  As of early 2010, 
NPA/SOCA contacts believed development was continuing, but 
they had not yet seen outputs. 
 
-- E.  The question of identity documents was a very timely 
one in South Africa in 2009.  The Department of Home Affairs 
(DHA) had responsibility for documenting nationals (including 
 
PRETORIA 00000289  007.2 OF 008 
 
 
birth / marriage / death certificates, identity cards, and 
passports) as well as for processing visas and permits for 
foreign migrants and asylum seekers.  DHA has long been 
notoriously dysfunctional, plagued by both inefficiency and 
corruption.  The problem of genuine South African passports 
fraudulently obtained by non-nationals has been so widespread 
that in 2009 the U.K. imposed a visa (with interview) 
requirement on South African travelers. 
 
The new Home Affairs Minister appointed in 2009 candidly 
acknowledged the problem, and she undertook to root out 
corruption in her department and ensure document security. 
(In December 2009, for example, DHA border officials 
confiscated hundreds of SAG passports from travelers 
suspected of being non-nationals.)  A key contributing factor 
to unreliability of SAG passports was late registration of 
births, common among black South Africans (including the 
Minister herself) who were neglected by the state under 
apartheid.  Because it was common for nationals to obtain 
identity documents as adults, this loophole was used by 
aliens to bribe officials and buy nationality.  As part of 
her overhaul, the Minister launched a mass campaign to 
register all South Africans (complete with biometric data) 
and to end late registration of births within the next two 
years. 
 
-- F.  The SAG was not able to gather or analyze data on law 
enforcement efforts related to human trafficking in any 
systematic fashion.  As noted in item "D" above, electronic 
data bases were still under development to track TIP and 
other cases.  Moreover, until the TIP Bill was enacted as 
law, statutory codes did not exist to differentiate cases of 
trafficking (which would be lumped together into statistics 
for all other rape, racketeering, forced labor, etc.).  Even 
the NPA/SOCA officers tasked with leading the SAG on TIP 
nationally were unable to furnish a list of ongoing cases; 
post relied on media reports.  Pending the law and national 
data base, the only way to collect such data would be via 
manual compilation, i.e. through phone inquiries to each 
prosecuting unit around the country. 
 
----------------------------- 
Investigation and Prosecution 
----------------------------- 
 
¶9.  (Responses to paragraph 27 of Ref A.) 
 
-- A.  South Africa's Prevention and Combating of Trafficking 
in Persons Bill was drafted and awaiting a vote date by 
Parliament.  (Cf. paragraph 8C.)  The Bill was comprehensive 
and specifically targeted to TIP, for both sexual 
exploitation and labor, in both domestic and cross-border 
cases.  (Note: full text of the bill, aka "Project 131," is 
at http://salawreform.justice.gov.za/reports.htm , the PDF 
report next to Project 131 -- Annexure D, pages 188-269.) 
 
Pending the TIP Bill's passage, prosecutors continued to rely 
on elements of common law (e.g. rape, assault, kidnapping, 
and extortion) and acts against racketeering, sexual abuse, 
forced labor and child labor, and pornography.  This body of 
Qforced labor and child labor, and pornography.  This body of 
legislation included the Prevention of Organized Crime Act 
121 of 1998 (POCA); the Sexual Offenses Act 23 of 1957, as 
amended in December 2007; the Basic Conditions of Employment 
Act 75 of 1997; the Children's Act 38 of 2005, as amended in 
November 2007; the Immigration Act 13 of 2002; the Films and 
Publications Act 65 of 1996; the Corruption Act 94 of 1992; 
the Extradition Act 67 of 1962; and the International 
Cooperation in Criminal Matters Act 75 of 1996.  (Note: these 
are unchanged since previous years' reports, hence they are 
not reproduced here.  End Note.) 
 
Given the strong ties of TIP to criminal networks, the 
Prevention of Organized Crime Act 121 of 1998 (POCA) was the 
law most used to date to punish traffickers, usually those 
 
PRETORIA 00000289  008.2 OF 008 
 
 
related to the sex trade.  SAPS noted that POCA also had the 
most extensive list of charges, hence highest probability 
that some would "stick" and yield convictions.  The new 
Sexual Offences Act (SOA) now criminalized trafficking for 
sexual exploitation and did not allow victims to be 
prosecuted for related offenses like immigration laws or 
prostitution.  (Note: full text of the latter provisions is 
at http://www.info.gov.za/gazette/bills/2003/b50 b-03.pdf, 
pages 40-41, sections 70-71(1)-71(2).) 
 
The Children's Act of 2005 prohibited "the recruitment, sale, 
supply, transportation, transportation, harboring or receipt 
of children, within or across the borders of the Republic." 
The law also prohibited the commercial sexual exploitation of 
children, sexual intercourse with children under 16, or 
permitting a female under 16 to stay in a brothel for the 
purpose of prostitution.  The Children's Amendment Act of 
2007, signed into law in March 2008, created an advanced 
regulatory framework for prevention and prosecution of child 
labor, explicitly outlaws child trafficking.  Section 141 of 
the Act defined and criminalized the worst forms of child 
labor, including TIP, in accordance with ILO Convention 182. 
This Act further included a requirement for planning at a 
national and provincial level along with an effective roll 
out of services.  Implementation of the Children's Act was 
reportedly only partial in 2009, with important elements 
stalled or stillborn, since key departments like DSD were 
unable to fulfill them due to capacity and/or cost 
constraints. 
 
-- B.  The maximum penalty for violations of the Sexual 
Offences or Children's Acts was 20 years in prison.  In the 
past, application of common law had obtained sentences nearly 
that long, as in the case of trafficker Amien Andrews, 
sentenced in 1996 and still serving 17 years for charges 
including kidnapping, indecent assault, and rape. 
 
-- C.  Labor related TIP offenses were punishable under a 
variety of existing laws.  The Basic Conditions of Employment 
Act removed cases of forced and child labor from the Labor 
Court and assigned them to the Criminal Court, where 
sentencing was based on precedent and case law.  Post was not 
aware of any case prosecuted to a close to set a precedent. 
 
-- D.  Penalties for rape and sexual assault were difficult 
to estimate.  The Sexual Offences Act makes mention of 
penalties from three to seven years, depending on offenses 
and their severity, leaving the sentence to the discretion of 
the court.  Penalties for these crimes against children were 
markedly more severe, up to a maximum life imprisonment, with 
even first time offenders receiving on the order of 15 or 
more years. 
 
-- E.  After a banner year in 2008, in which at least 16 
traffickers were arrested and charged, post uncovered fewer 
cases in 2009.  This may be due to police focus on 
Confederations Cup and World Cup security, or law enforcement 
seeing through the caseload of 2008, or simply lack of media 
Qseeing through the caseload of 2008, or simply lack of media 
coverage of specific cases. 
 
In March, police arrested several several wealthy Durban 
businessmen linked to a child prostition ring.  The case was 
ongoing at year's end, with reportedly more arrests pending. 
In October, police rescued from a Durban brothel a 
13-year-old girl they believed had been trafficked from a 
neighboring province; the case was under investigation at 
year end.  In November, a Thai woman (married to a South 
African) Giang Brooderyk was arrested for luring Thai women 
on promises of massage jobs, then forcing them to work as 
prostitutes.  The trial was postponed to February to enable 
investigation. 
 
(Text of paragraph 9 continues in the "Part 2" cable.) 
GIPS