Sex work is not real work but a symptom of a broken society, and obviously colonialism is the main contributor to this. Yes, we all need to earn a living, support ourselves and our families, but in doing so, we cannot promote or advocate for sex work as real work. We need to deal with the real issues, the underlying causes of this social ill, instead of focusing on its ugly symptoms and accepting them as normal. We need to stop normalising things that are abnormal in an attempt to cheaply gain “political credentials” and become populists.

This piece stems from a very disturbing Facebook post by Naledi Chirwa, which was recently shared on Facebook. The post read as follows:

“Maybe you must ask your mothers how they managed to raise you and your 4 siblings singlehandedly with R800 remuneration or no job at all. Supporting criminalization of sex work indirectly calls for the arrest of some of your own parents for selling sex to raise you. Sex work is not a new phenomenon and nobody deserves to go to jail for being a victim of capitalism. Sex work must be decriminalized. #SexWorkIsWork”

The above post by Naledi is not only derogatory, but an insult to many low-earning women especially black women and their children whom were raised with R800 to no job at all. Self-loving and respecting mothers or women will never settle for selling sex to feed their children, especially black women, they are known for working hard and selling their physical hard labour in the farms or fields, houses of white capitalists, the elites and middle class as domestic workers. For them that money was sufficient.

They never saw selling sex as an additional income as Naledi insinuates , in instances where the “R800” was not enough or rather they had extra needs, they would hop from house to house and work overtime, put on a stall and sell fruit and vegetables on the streets or braai and sell meat.

In pre-colonial Africa, black people lived through a socialist system, led by African values. The spirit of Ubuntu was the order of the day. As Steve Biko correctly and beautifully puts it “It was never repugnant to ask one’s neighbours for help if one was struggling. In almost all instances there was help between individuals, tribe and tribe, chief and chief etc. even in spite of war. Another important aspect of the African culture is our mental attitude to problems presented by life in general. Whereas the Westerner is geared to use a problem-solving approach following very trenchant analyses, our approach is that of situation-experiencing”.

Therefore, in this instance, I will have to also agree and support Mandisi Gladile’s statement that; “the idea that sex work is real work is at variance with African modes of being and existing in the world. African culture, across all its recorded histories, and archives does not have a conception of sex as work, or sex as an exchangeable endowment. This notion of “I give you sex, I work as sex slave” therefore you must pay me money is un-African and only locatable in bourgeois logic of a money-making scheme”, from his recent piece titled; The Fallacy of Sex Work as Real Work.

Sex work is a foreign concept in Africa, just like poverty, capitalism, slavery, exploitation and all other forms of oppression which landed at our shores as a result colonialism, and the arrival of settlers. I find it very mind-blogging that a MP and member of a political party that clearly states in its preamble that it is “a radical, left, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movement with an international outlook anchored by popular grassroots formations and struggles and that it will be the vanguard of community and worker’s struggles and will always be on the side of the people” would advocate for the perpetuation of such. The question is, therefore, how are you on the side of the people when you seem to be accepting and normalising their sad demise? Isn’t that contradictory? In my opinion, I believe that, one should be radically fighting the underlying cause of this social illness called prostitution which further leads to physical illness in the form of HIV/AIDS that mostly destroys the black population than any other race.

How do you even begin to boldly and recklessly advocate for prostitution in a country like South Africa, where about 7.7 million people live with HIV and which has the biggest and most -high profile HIV epidemic in the world. In 2018, there were 240,000 new HIV infections and 71,000 South Africans died from AIDS-related illnesses. HIV prevalence among general population is at 20.4% (ages 15-49). Prevalence is higher among men who have sex with men, transgender women, “sex workers” and people who inject drugs. This country also has the world’s largest antiretroviral treatment (ART) programme, 62% of adults and 63% of children are on ARV’s.

I doubt Naledi and Thuli Zulu had knowledge of this or took cognisance of it before advocating for prostitution. Unless, of course, they were just bluffing, just to remain relevantwith their misplaced wokeness and acculturation tendencies. Naledi could not even defend or substantiate her rants scientifically nor ideologically after a critique by Mandisi; instead she went to extract an excerpt on EFF’s position on sex work, so her rants on “sex work is real work” remain illogical, unsubstantiated and irrational.

In conclusion, let me touch on that rather astonishing and mind blogging piece by Thuli Zulu, titled; “Perhaps Karl Marx was wrong: Sex Work is Work, a response to Mandisi Gladile”. Thuli Zulu states that “in Africa sex has been used as an exchangeable endowment for measuring a woman’s worth or as reward for good behaviour. In the first example we can easily observe how sex is used in the in the widely known phenomenon of iLobolo practised by several Africans to initiate the process of marriage. During Lobolo negotiationsone easily make an observation that can lead to a conclusion that sex marks the worth of the woman”.

The above statement by Thuli is not only illogical but extremely disingenuous and lacks content. In African customary law, lobolo serves as contract peculiar to customary law as an agreement between two families in order for a customary marriage to officially take place. Lobolo is the most important contract in customary law, just like prenuptial agreement/contract is important in western/Eurocentric family law in order for a civil marriage to take place. Thuli Zulu must not allow her deepened self-hate and anti-blackness to lead her to disrespect, undermine and insult an African culture.

Vuyo Nyeli is an Activist, Clinical Consultant and senior Law (LLB) Student at University of South Africa (Unisa)

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”  – George Owell 

There must be a clear line drawn between the decriminalising of sex work for the benefit of safety, and the regulation of legal work, as oppose to non regulation and danger in illegality, and actually decriminalization because we are convinced that dehumanising and exploitative labour is tolerable. The call for decriminalisation must never be advanced from an ignorance of structural coercion, financial exclusion and the dehumanization agenda of capitalism. Writers before me have shared and contributed to shaping this thought.

The battle for empowerment and humanization must never be advanced from a naive confusion and shallow misrepresentation of the role of labour and the values of capitalism. We lament a weak, but popular feminist argument made in the name of reinforcing ideas of ethics, self actualization, autonomy and relative morality. The argument endorses a legitimisation of sex work because it apparently holds some opportunity for individual income and agency. In other words, to hell with our socialist ideals of ending the commodification of people, and we must continue to expand the problematic values of capitalism. In fact, their argument is that we must disregard absolute consent, and that structural coercion is not so bad because it is happening anyway, and everywhere.

Basically there is an underlying liberal-cultural tolerance and support for dehumanizing, exploitative and usually degrading work because, “similarly dehumanizing exploitative and degrading work is already legitimized”.

The question is by whom? Who legitimized such work? Who benefits from such a legitimization of such work?  Who benefits from an absolute introduction and expansion of work that is dissociated from humanity and socialist values of dignity? Who is at the helm of capitalism, and why do we think there will never be an attempt for its institutions and its bourgeoisie peddlers to expand its agenda on the structurally excluded? Why do we think it will not use our own?

In the name of proving that theory is fluid, constantly moving and capable to read and capture time, we have heard probably the most disastrous revision of Marx in history. This bastardisation is unforgivable, non-scientific, and quite frankly, should be severely punished, as should plagiarism. As Fanon so correctly put it, “Black people are locked in blackness and white people are locked in whiteness…” Therefore, we must never be afraid to zoom into our reality and our conditions in an anti black world. 

Can we, in an anti black world, participate, cultivate and without serious scrutiny adopt the language, subjectivity and culturalization project of the bourgeoisie, who are anti-black extensions of an anti black world? We must reflect on the premature willingness to participate in our own oppression, and constantly guard our tolerance for oppression, dehumanizing work and culturalization of the west. I am sold to support Mandisi Gladile’s piece, titled; The Fallacy of Sex Work as Real Work.

We must honestly reject both submissions brought forward as responses to Mandisi’s initial piece.  Firstly, they are illogical and plagiarized regurgitations of liberal logic, and like all liberal reformists, we never see their logic exist and survive post capitalism.

We have heard the most shallow and borrowed argument that, “all work under capitalism is particularly dehumanising and therefore it’s apparently a valid reason to introduce another dehumanising activity.” 

I wonder if the idiocy of this cabal would continue to say people who are terminally ill should not be allowed medicine because there are other terminally ill people out there and they are dying. Let’s let everyone die. If we can prevent further expansion of a dehumanizing and exploitative labour why not prevent it?

The Nordic model used in Switzerland is a great attempt at maintaining balance between maintaining a rejection for the dehumanizing and exploitative labour that is sex work, while protecting the vulnerable and structurally coerced sex worker. In short, it is a hybrid decriminalization of prostitution with a criminalisation of the purchase of commercial sexual activity, with support for those who want to get out through education and governmental support. This is a conversation I am yet to hear from the space, which is sad because the only leg this argument of decriminalising sex work has stood on is the benefit of safety and regulation of legal labour. 

Here is a model that is slowly guaranteeing such, and still substantively criminalizing the sale of one’s body, but we still only hear “your mothers were sex workers, sex work is work we don’t care if its dehumanizing and exploitative.” 

 Say we entertain their arguments and, for a moment, pretend their points are valid. If we legitimise sex work as “work” now; what will sex work look like in liberated society? If we agree with the sale of one’s body now, we must agree that we must retain it in the future. If as socialists we are pushing for means of production to be socialized according to the principle of each according to his ability, and to each according to his needs; how will prostitution and sex work, work?

Needless to say, the idea that lobola being accepted culturally is a manifestation of sex work is ludicrous, ideologically lazy and personifies a cultural hangover. However, we are forgiving because we know this is a result of liberal socialisation and boutique multiculturalism. We know that these two things are very discrete about their hostility to afro-centric culture and practice, even if they at times sound accommodative to African experiences. Proudly, we reject disingenuous and colossal contradictions of pan Africans and socialists, made to appease a comfort for a liberal anti-African and a capitalist post colonialism-modernisation project. 

Though we exist within a defiling capitalist reality and its coerced dehumanizing conditions, we must always revolt. We must always capacitate ourselves and even those who want to dehumanise themselves for survival, with theory that will help them escape the box of blackness and its oppressive trap of dehumanization. Beyond just saying sex work for the structurally excluded and structurally coerced can’t be legitimate work, I further hypothesize with Gladile that this is foreign to African epistemology and must be rejected.

This is why this conversation is happening within the lens of a compromised liberal legal framework. We must never use the law to vindicate capitalist evils. This conversation is not just about liberal gymnastics of legality, as liberal reformist have misled us to believe. Of course, in the eyes of liberal reformists, changing the law instead of removing an entire system is revolutionary and progressive. However, to those of us who have not forgotten that the current law is an extension of the Roman-Dutch rule and capitalist colonial order, it bears no allegiance to socialist expression and the epistemology of Africa. We cannot willingly swallow this liberal legal pill.

The institution encompasses no true observation and appreciation for socialist ideals and values. This liberal insanity and obsession to attempt to quench the disastrous dangers of sex work is problematic, disingenuous and serves as a tool to legalise dehumanization and the objectification of the human body. Basically we have, on one hand, a cabal that is grand standing, plagiarizing and even insulting traditional leftists for the continued sale of the souls of people to dehumanizing and exploitative labour. On the other extreme, we have people who think that these people are insane. I am part of the latter.

Izwe

Xola Mehlomakulu is the National Spokesperson of EFFSC
Former  UKZN PSRC Secretary General 16/17
Former UKZN CSRC Academic and transformation 17/18
Umthatha Christian School Debating Coach