Being pimped out - How South Africa's AIDS response fails sex workers

Abstract

abstract Sex work is highly stigmatised in South Africa. All aspects of sex work are currently a criminal offence. Sex workers’ stigmatised position in society, and the nature of their work-multiple, concurrent sexual partnerships, working within dangerous and violent spaces, and lack of services and legal protection-render them particularly vulnerable to HIV and other Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs). No recent data on sex worker HIV prevalence in South Africa exists, but it ranged from 45%–69% in 1998. Sex work often occupies a much maligned – and often sensationalised or lurid – space in contemporary thinking and social change activism on feminism, health matters, policy-formation and human rights in Africa. Few individuals or institutions treat sex work or sex workers with seriousness or respect. Indeed, in areas of policy-formation, programme design or law reform, sex workers are often either overlooked, paid lip-service to, or they are let down during power-broking. South Africa's AIDS response has been no exception. This Briefing explores South Africa's 2007 and 2012 AIDS Plans and the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) processes during 2007–2011 as a case study of sex work marginalisation at a critical time where their interests and demands should have been heeded: not only as it would recognise sex worker health, human rights and dignity, but as it would have significant public health effects.