This article was published on Times Select on the 10th June For Phindiswa Klaas, 35, working in the sex trade was not something she had ever thought about. She had grown up in Engcobo in the Eastern Cape with her mother and four sisters. Living in a household with 13 people in the the under-resourced area like Site B in Khayelitsha, Phindiswa had little hope that a great future awaited her. Then, she met a young man who soon became her boyfriend.
Then, her boyfriend took her to the neighbours who began telling her that there were job prospects in Mfuleni, which is about 5km away from Site B. I needed money and they were getting money. The women, seeing that she was clearly still in her early 20s, told her she was too young for such business but she was desperate for money and insisted.
It was two years later when she was desperate to get out of the system that she took up voluntary work for the ANC. By then, the boyfriend who had pimped her was no longer around. By that time I found a boyfriend who was also permanent working for ANC, and he married me. When the three-month contract was over, Phindiswa felt like her life could get back on track, but once again she had no income.
She and her boyfriend had had a baby, so now she had two children, and no money. She then found a job as a parking marshal, and still held hope that things would turn around. But the salary was so small it could hardly be called a living wage. Phindiswa had another baby girl, and saw no other way of making a living. She says that the hardest part about it was doing it to feed and clothe her children, while also having to hide from them how she was making a living.
She once even pretended to them that she was selling drugs as a way of explaining her secretive behaviour. But her children remained suspicious. Why was there a man here? After years of finding herself in sexually and otherwise abusive situations just to earn a living, Phindiswa finally joined an NGO, the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce. Here, she campaigned with others for the inclusion of sex workers as respected and valued members of society, and carried on working as a sex worker.
