PRETORIA INPUTS TO THE 2009 TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 08 PRETORIA 000298

SIPDIS
SENSITIVE

DEPT FOR AF/S, AF/RSA; G/TIP FOR STEPHANIE KRONENBURG;
G-ACBLANK, INL, DRL, PRM

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL SA KTIP KCRM PHUM KWMN SMIG KFRD
ASEC, PREF, ELAB
SUBJECT: PRETORIA INPUTS TO THE 2009 TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS
(TIP) REPORT -- PART 1 OF 2

REF: A. STATE 05577

B. 08 STATE 132759

C. 08 PRETORIA 2249

D. 08 PRETORIA 2454

E. 08 PRETORIA 1926

--------------
Summary
--------------


1. Post hereby submits responses to the Department's action
request (Refs A,B) for the ninth annual Trafficking in
Persons (TIP) Report, covering the period from March 2008
through mid-February 2009. Following an overview of South
Africa's counter-trafficking efforts, and of its unique
capacity challenges as a 14-year-old emerging democracy,
responses in paragraphs 7-13 correspond to the Department's
paragraphs 23-29 of specific questions. Paragraphs 14-17
below then list sources, Post contributors, time spent, and
TIP contact. End Summary.

--------------
Overview: Steady Progress Against TIP
--------------


2. Per Post's reporting through the year (Refs C, D, E),the
South African government (SAG) is committed to combating the
scourge of human trafficking. The key hurdle remains
comprehensive anti-TIP legislation, which is now drafted and
due for passage in late 2009 after mid-year parliamentary
elections. A tough, focused law is necessary to grant
mandates and resources to law enforcement, the judiciary, and
social services to punish perpetrators and protect victims.


3. In the meantime, however, the National Prosecuting
Authority (NPA)'s Sexual Offences and Community Affairs
(SOCA) unit is mobilizing affected SAG agencies, civil
society groups, and the public through task teams, training,
and awareness campaigns. Extensive workshops by NPA/SOCA,
the International Organization for Migration (IOM),NGOs, and
academic experts educated over 3,000 attendees in 2008,
across a spectrum of SAG officials, NGO workers, and the
media, to ready these stakeholders for the law's passage.
Police are noticeably shifting paradigms, from punishing
victims to protecting them, and prosecutors have taken at
least 16 traffickers to trial during the reporting period.
Social workers continue their longstanding assistance to
victims, coordinated by the SAG's Victims' Empowerment
directorate.


4. Public awareness campaigns continue to expand, including
during the annual Human Trafficking Awareness Week, the '16
Days of Activism' to end the abuse of women and children, and
new targeted anti-TIP efforts in advance of South Africa's
hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Like the other annual
campaigns, the 2010 initiatives aim to alert the traveling
public about trafficking and especially to safeguard children
who will flock to fan parks. Efforts include awareness talks
to educate vulnerable communities (potential victims),
distribution of in-hotel leaflets and stadium signage to
inform fans (prospective clients),and marshaling of NGO
volunteers to provide on-site assistance booths. The tourism
sector, anxious to showcase South Africa as a wholesome
destination, is fully on board, even convening a private
industry forum next month seeking ways to confront sex
Qindustry forum next month seeking ways to confront sex
tourism.

--------------
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

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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 14-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. 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 23 of Ref B.)

-- A. Sources of information on TIP are dispersed, since
many groups address 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 is no central repository of qualitative information and
no source of statistical data. While a wide array of
anti-TIP efforts are underway in South Africa, the majority
of those are not publicized in published documents, and
information must be gathered primarily through in-person
meetings. The 20 counterparts interviewed by post for this
year's TIP Report are listed in paragraph 14 below. Post
believes these sources are reliable, in the sense of being
truthful, but their information is 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 is a country of origin, transit, and
destination for women, children, and men trafficked
internally (domestically) and internationally across its
borders. (The country has no ungoverned territory or civil
war.) Domestically, victims are largely trafficked from poor
rural areas to urban centers like Johannesburg, Cape Town,
Durban, and Bloemfontein. For a detailed list of primary
locations and a map of main domestic trafficking routes, see
Qlocations 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").

Among international victims, countries of origin can be
partly inferred from the 262 victims directly assisted by IOM
from January 2004 to January 2009. These were a mix of
persons from Asia and neighboring countries of Southern
Africa -- most of them Thai (147),as well as Congolese (35),
Indian (12),Chinese (11),Mozambican (10),and Zimbabwean
(9). According to the NPA, Chinese traffickers make
Johannesburg a regional hub for collecting victims from
Lesotho, Mozambique, and Swaziland, for exploitation locally

PRETORIA 00000298 003 OF 008


and in other cities. South African women are trafficked
abroad 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 have reportedly begun
moving trafficked women to the U.S. as well, targeting
African migrant clients there. Inside South Africa, Thai
women are exploited in large numbers in humble brothels,
while Russian and Ukranian women are trafficked for sex work
in exclusive private men's clubs.

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 "muti" (organ removal
for traditional medicine). Both internally and
internationally, commercial sexual exploitation is 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 are trafficked to sweatshop factories in Chinese
urban enclaves in South Africa. These operations are highly
organized and mobile to evade labor inspectors, even moving
in and out of neighboring Lesotho and Swaziland to avoid
arrest. While SADOL acknowledges that Mozambican or
Zimbabwean men and children are exploited by labor brokers in
South Africa for farm work, SADOL characterizes this as a
localized abuse of migrants already seeking work in the area,
rather than TIP per se as was reported last year. The South
African Police Service (SAPS)' TIP officer also described
exploitative farm labor in border areas as smuggling more
than TIP.

There are no available estimates of the numbers of TIP
victims in South Africa, but numbers are believed to be high.
Patterns of TIP destinations and purposes in 2008 were
consistent with those reported in prior years. New venues
for the sex trade are said to be proliferating near football
stadiums in advance of the 2010 FIFA World Cup -- accompanied
by expanded efforts by traffickers to groom new groups of
victims for commercial sexual exploitation.

-- 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 are
bused to big cities, then corralled into small holding rooms
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,
trafficked 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
Qintimidation 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 are mainly poor blacks, from rural areas suffering
high rates of unemployment and from where wage earners have
traditionally migrated to cities in search of work. With
half the population below the poverty line, and roughly a
fourth unemployed, many who are desperate for work will
travel long distances to where the economy is more robust.
Economic disparities among racial groups and between rural
vs. urban communities create trafficking opportunities.

The AIDS epidemic in South Africa has also increased
mobility, and hence vulnerability, not just of young men but
of women and children heads of household. NGOs such as
Khulisa estimate that children make up 60 percent of TIP
victims in South Africa, although kept on farms and in

PRETORIA 00000298 004 OF 008


private homes these are harder for law enforcement to locate
and rescue compared to the more easily identifiable foreign
women in brothels. A growing population of orphans are
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 may fall
prey to TIP.

-- E. Organized criminal groups including Nigerian, Chinese,
Thai, Ukranian, and Russian syndicates and local gangs
facilitate 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
recruit victims of their own nationalities, but there is also
secondary "swapping" of victims. The IOM study documents
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 are 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 victims
used to be runaways who fell prey to city pimps, nowadays
syndicates proactively send recruiters to rural towns.
Recruiters for the sex trade are 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 24 of Ref B.)

-- A. The SAG acknowledges the TIP problem and has drafted
comprehensive legislation to combat it. In the meantime, it
is using existing and interim legislation to arrest and
punish perpetrators, commissioning training of officials to
recognize and address TIP situations, and expanding shelters
and services to attend to victims.

-- B. NPA/SOCA has the lead in coordinating SAG
countertrafficking efforts, both within government and with
external partners from civil society. NPA/SOCA chairs a
Trafficking in Persons Inter-sectoral Task Team whose members
include 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 is limited. Our sources described South
Africa's anti-TIP activity as mainly independent,
operating-level 'silos' of action among many public and
Qoperating-level 'silos' of action among many public and
private actors.

The Task Team's primary focus in 2008 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. With EU
funding, NPA/SOCA has also in recent weeks awarded contracts
for a set of five anti-TIP initiatives due to run through the
end of 2010. These are: curriculum development (continuing
work by IOM); 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

PRETORIA 00000298 005 OF 008


law); legislation and regulations (ongoing with the South
African Law Reform Commission (SALRC)); awareness raising
(given to the International Organization of Labor's
International Training Center); and technology connectivity
with neighboring countries to promote more effective
monitoring, law enforcement, and victim protection.

-- C. The key hurdle to SAG's anti-TIP efforts hurdle
remains comprehensive anti-TIP legislation, which is in the
late stages of the drafting process. The SALRC released a
first draft was released in mid-2008, which underwent
consultations and revisions. A second draft was submitted on
November 25 to the Minister of Justice (MoJ) and the
Parliamentary committee. MoJ Enver Surty has declared
passage of this TIP legislation as a personal priority for
2009, despite the year's disruptions to legislative schedules
due to national elections in the second quarter. A tough,
focused law is necessary to grant resources and authorities
to law enforcement, the judiciary, and social services for
prosecution, protection, and prevention.

Other important limitations include capacity of SAPS, NPA,
and Social Development to pursue all cases and attend to all
victims, given insufficient police and prosecutors, and
chronic shortfalls in the ranks of social workers. The
problem is 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.

Awareness of TIP-related law, ability to apply it in
identifying cases, and confident knowledge in appropriate
measures to take are also still lacking, hampering the
responses of police and immigration officers, since only a
minority have yet been exposed to counter-TIP training.
Police officers may receive bribes from crime syndicates, or
fail to pursue them out of fear of reprisals, or they may
prefer to deport victims as a shortcut compared to opening a
TIP investigation, particularly given language barriers.
There is no evidence of large-scale corruption or official
collaboration with traffickers, but the large sums of money
generated by the trade is believed to fund localized
corruption.

-- D. The SAG does not yet have a systematic mechanism for
monitoring and reporting the anti-trafficking efforts of its
own agencies and external partners. Work has been suspended
on the "Trafficking in Information Management System" (TIMS)
mentioned in last year's report, replaced by plans to
incorporate TIP tracking into a larger data base of justice
and crime prevention called "e-justice." The latter will
track investigations, prosecutions, and victims, across SAPS,
NPA, DHA, SADOL, and DSD. E-justice is expected to be two to
three years in development.

--------------
Investigation and Prosecution
--------------


9. (Responses to paragraph 25 of Ref B.)

-- A. South Africa's Prevention and Combating of Trafficking
Q-- A. South Africa's Prevention and Combating of Trafficking
in Persons Bill is drafted and awaiting a vote date on the
2009 Parliamentary calendar. The Bill is 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 continue 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

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legislation includes 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 last year's report, 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) is the
law most used to date to punish traffickers, usually those
related to the sex trade. SAPS noted that POCA also has the
most extensive list of charges, hence highest probability
that some will "stick" and yield convictions. The Sexual
Offences Act (SOA) also now criminalizes trafficking for
sexual exploitation and does 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 prohibits "the recruitment, sale,
supply, transportation, transportation, harboring or receipt
of children, within or across the borders of the Republic."
The law also prohibits 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, creates an advanced
regulatory framework for prevention and prosecution of child
labor, explicitly outlaws child trafficking. Section 141 of
the Act defines and criminalizes the worst forms of child
labor, including TIP, in accordance with ILO Convention 182.
This Act further includes a requirement for planning at a
national and provincial level along with an effective roll
out of services. Although the provisions of the Children's
Amendment Act cannot officially take effect until the
completion of regulations governing its implementation,
children's legal advocates say the SAG is already taking
action as if the Act were fully in force, and they strongly
believe those implementing regulations will be put in place
in 2009.

-- B. The maximum penalty for violations of the Sexual
Offences or Children's Acts is 20 years in prison. In the
past, application of common law has 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 are punishable under a
variety of existing laws. The Basic Conditions of Employment
Act removes cases of forced and child labor from the Labor
Court and assigns them to the Criminal Court, where
QCourt and assigns them to the Criminal Court, where
sentencing is based on precedent and case law. Post is not
aware of any case prosecuted to a close to set a precedent.

-- D. Penalties for rape and sexual assault are 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 are
markedly more severe, up to a maximum life imprisonment, with
even first time offenders receiving on the order of 15 or
more years.

-- E. The SAG opened at least five new prosecutions of
trafficking cases during the reporting period, including two
with charges under the newly expanded SOA. In May, a
Mozambican woman Aldina dos Santos was charged with child
trafficking and forced labor for subjecting three girls to

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sexual exploitation (under the SOA) and domestic servitude
(under labor law). Also in May, a female club owner and her
adult daughter were arrested for luring eight South African
women into forced prostitution. In June, a Sierra Leone
national was arrested for selling girls aged eight to 12 into
prostitution. In November, five Nigerian men were arrested
for trafficking Nigerians through South Africa. They were
charged with TIP offenses under the SOA as well as for
drug-related crimes. In late January, six Nigerians and one
Tanzanian were arrested, and 17 South African victims
rescued, in North West province. Charges in the latter case
include drug trafficking and prostitution, with TIP charges
to be determined.

Aside from these cases highlighted in the press and confirmed
by NPA, no complete figures on SAPS investigations or NPA
prosecutions were available. Of the five cases listed here,
all concerned commercial sexual exploitation (and one forced
labor as well); in four of the five cases the traffickers
were non-nationals, although in three of the five cases their
victims were local; and the cases were split between children
and adult victims. All five cases were ongoing at year-end.
No convictions were reached or sentences handed down during
the reporting period.

While there were no prosecutions in the reporting period
specifically targeting fraudulent labor recruitment, the
alleged traffickers charged above may have made deceptive
offers or imposed debt bondage on their victims as part of
their TIP activity. As mentioned earlier, SADOL labor
inspectors did pursue unscrupulous labor brokers in the rural
agricultural sectors, and they have pledged to reform or ban
labor brokering after the 2009 national election. On the
destination end of trafficking, the above five cases apply to
"employers" who tricked, intimidated, and abused victims.
Past examples of convictions of both recruiters and employers
of TIP victims include recruiter Amien Andrews, sentenced to
17 years in 1996, and still in jail; and brothel boss
Elizabeth Maswanganye, who lured women and exploited them,
sentenced to 5 years in 2006, and still in jail.

-- F. On behalf of NPA/SOCA, the IOM and other experts from
the academic and NGO communities are providing extensive
specialized counter-trafficking training to officials from an
array of government agencies, from law enforcement to
immigration officers to social workers, plus representatives
of NGOs, advocacy organizations, and the media. Training
material encompasses the definition of trafficking, as
distinct from smuggling; identification criteria; legal
frameworks; and roles of various government departments and
community actors. The table below summarizes the more than
1,000 SAG attendees of EU-funded IOM anti-TIP workshops in
just the latter half of last year:

-------------- ---
IOM Counter-Trafficking Training Attendees
July - December 2008
QJuly - December 2008
-------------- ---
- Dept. of Home Affairs / Border Officers: 339
- Department of Social Development: 155
- South African Police Service (SAPS): 139
- Department of Health: 135
- Department of Labor: 100
- National Prosecuting Authority: 71
- Dept. of Home Affairs / Law Enforcement: 44
- Other law enforcement agencies: 33
- Media professionals: 32
-------------- ---
Total: 1,048 persons trained against TIP
-------------- ---

IOM/SAG workshops will continue through 2009, emphasizing
coordinated responses across government agencies, NGOs, and
the public. After an intensive five-day IOM course, 68

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representatives of NGOs and church charities were certified
as TIP trainers by conducting onward two-day courses in their
provinces. A total of 30 awareness-raising workshops across
all nine provinces drew 573 community participants. IOM's
curriculum is being reviewed for SAG accreditation and
institutionalized roll-out across the SAG within the next
year.

Susan Kreston, children's rights advocate and guest lecturer
at the University of the Free State, estimates she gave
anti-TIP training to 1,535 workshop attendees during the
year, encompassing police, prosecutors, social workers,
medical and mental health professionals, NGO officers, and
others. Of that audience, over 500 were participants in NPA
training workshops on the SOA, within which Ms. Kreston
taught the TIP module. Over 200 others were prosecutors, in
training at regional Justice Colleges. An estimated 265 were
attendees of the May annual meeting of the South African
Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (SAPSAC),where
TIP was one segment in 2008 but will be the primary theme of
the upcoming 2009 conference. A mixed community audience of
about 225 attended Ms. Kreston's sessions in Durban in March,
covering a range of topics from TIP basics and the SOA, to
forensic interviewing, to preparing children to testify in
court. The Durban series was underwritten by the NPA, a
local NGO, and the U.S. Consulate. In January 2009, Ms.
Kreston will contribute to anti-TIP presentations run by Save
the Children-UK.

The USG is also contributing directly to the training effort.
State/INL's Women's Justice and Empowerment Initiative
(WJEI) team, currently training police and prosecutors on
gender-based violence and the amended Sexual Offences Act, is
contractually committed to expanding the program to address
TIP, and to include seminars for judges. WJEI's law
enforcement advisor is currently exploring training
opportunities with the SAPS addressing TIP, in preparation
for imminent passage of the TIP law. In this endeavor, WJEI
is looking to leverage the expertise of a DHS/ICE officer who
has personally delivered anti-TIP training to over 2,500
members of the police force in his previous role with IOM.

(Text of paragraph 9 continues in the "Part 2" cable.)
LA LIME