Mokonyane Open Minded About Sex Work
15 May 2009
New Gauteng premier Nomvula Mokonyane has become the latest high-profile politician to call for the decriminalisation of prostitution.
Mokonyane yesterday told journalists in Pretoria that she, as an ANC member and Gauteng premier, would keep an "open mind" about recognising the "oldest profession".
"Worldwide you will find it. What is important is the management, even their protection.
"We must work on protecting [prostitutes] because, in some instances, they [are] exploited.
"So I have an open mind and my passion is that we need to be quite open-minded and deal with not only punishing them but managing this kind of business.
"We must begin to appreciate that commercial sex work is an industry here in Gauteng; we must deal with it objectively and with an open mind," she said.
Though she would not commit herself to lobbying for the legalisation of prostitution, Mokonyane said she believed that it would be "more progressive" to recognise it.
She argued that, with proper management, a "conducive" environment could be created in which "it does not become something that can embarrass us".
She said that in a conducive environment prostitutes could be saved from being used in acts of crime and from being exploited.
"What we need to do is to work such that we avoid [sex work] being used for other wrong things, such as drug trafficking, mugging of people and so on," the premier said.
"The best is to recognise commercial sex work, make sure it has different support systems...have a designated area, register people, let them be subjected to periodic health tests, and also let them be subjected to what me and you are subjected to, tax," she said.
Mokonyane said that the government should not wait until 2010 and the World Cup in South Africa because there were "pressing issues" that faced prostitutes now.
"We have seen sex workers getting pregnant when it was not their intention to have children; they get dumped and raped and it is precisely how we deal with it that makes it an act of crime," said Mokonyane.
