GEORGE NEWS - Imagine your daughter goes off to study, leaves on an exchange programme, or a great work opportunity crosses her path, and she disappears into thin air. Never to be seen again.
She lands at the hands of human traffickers and is forced to become a sex worker, a drug mule or a victim of organ harvesting.
This is not a scene from a Hollywood horror movie, this is the reality of human trafficking - one of the fastest growing crimes in the world - and it happens here in South Africa, and right here in George.
Speaking at a Rotary Club function in George on Tuesday 3 October Coen Scholtz, who together with his wife Suria runs the Christian NGO Ethnos Movement International, confirmed that even in George there have been incidents of women being trafficked.
The Scholtz couple has been involved in the war against human trafficking for many, many years.
They focus on raising awareness of the realities and dangers of human trafficking and modern slavery to help prevent the vulnerable from becoming trapped, and strengthen potential victims within their families and communities.
Most of their work is preventative, but they have also been involved in some rescue operations.
Scared of police
With Coen and Suria's years of involvement they know who they can trust.
"Unfortunately many of the police officers can't be trusted - and these girls know it. If they go to the police and the 'wrong' officer is behind the desk, they are taken back to the traffickers for money.
"Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing the police, there are many great police officers out there, but the reality is that organised crime has its tentacles everywhere," he said.
Shocking stats
Visiting from Florida in the USA, anti-human traffic advocate Gabriella Winters spoke about the reality of human trafficking while giving some eye-opening statistics. "The longer we live in denial about it, the closer it comes to home.
"The reality of it is, it is already here, it is already in our shopping centres and already in our communities," she said.
Every five hours a child goes missing in South Africa and currently there are between 155 000 and 300 000 people enslaved in South Africa alone.
Some 23% of global trafficking takes place in Africa with the DRC and Libya having the highest number of victims. Most of these victims are children between the ages of 12 and 16 that are recruited as soldiers, or sold for prostitution or forced labour.
SA a hotspot for traffickers
According to Scholtz, South Africa remains a key source, transit, and destination for trafficked people.
"However, the total [recorded] number of trafficking in the country is weakened by poor record keeping, the inaccessibility of official data, and the still outstanding integrated information system required to collate and analyse information," he said. Adding insult to injury, there are very few successful prosecutions.
Between December 2007 and January 2022, an estimated 11 077 human trafficking cases countrywide were reported to the police.
Only 44 were successfully prosecuted and the majority of these (36) were sex trafficking cases. Only 77 traffickers were convicted - 39 were men and 38 women. Fifty of them were South African.
More than 25 million people globally are affected by this crime annually.
Girls as young as 10 years old become victims of sex trafficking, while some well-known brothels that have been identified as locations of sex trafficking, continue to operate.
Indicators
While not an exhaustive list, these are some key red flags that could alert you to a potential trafficking situation that should be reported.
- Living with employer
- Poor living conditions
- Multiple people in cramped space
- Inability to speak to individual alone
- Answers appear to be scripted and rehearsed
- Employer is holding identity documents
- Signs of physical abuse
- Submissive or fearful
- Unpaid or paid very little
- Under 18 and in prostitution
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