Advocacy groups has implored all and sundry to stop human trafficking now.
To ventilate their concern, members of the different groups and stakeholders embarked on an awareness campaign in Tshwane at large and ended up at Burgers Park, where they distributed pamphlets around the streets on Tuesday.
The awareness was organized by the department of social development and were joined by Thandanani drop-in Centre, Brave TO Love, TUT students, Hawks, SAPS, TMPD, Fula Africa and Voice in Action.
Ambassador of Trafficking in Person (TIP) and social worker against human trafficking Ntombi Moloi told Tshwane Talks that they organize this awareness because human trafficking is rife in Tshwane and the aim of the campaign was to talk to each and every person who could hear them about human trafficking.
“We started our campaign via a motorcade drive which was a showstopper at the Union Buildings, then went to Sunnyside and Marabastad and drive around Pretoria CBD before ending the campaign at Burgers Park,” she said.
She said this awareness also because they will host a big provincial event on the 24 October 2024 in Johannesburg.
One week of October every year is human trafficking week, so we need to make sure our people get information, and we need to raise awareness to people in our community, and people need to know about human trafficking, need to know of buying and selling of people that is happening here in South Africa.
“People need to be aware that anyone can be a traffic and people to know about the true element of human trafficking.
We want people to know that human trafficking is real, and it can happen to anyone, and people must be careful at all times,” said Moloi.
According to founder of Brave To Love Emma Van der Walt, human trafficking is one of the worst crimes in the country and it is tantamount to modern-day slavery.
Speaking to Tshwane Talks at Burgers Park on Tuesday during the awareness campaign, Van der Walt said the following:
“We are a non-profit, counter human trafficking organisation and we are here today to raise public awareness regarding human trafficking,” she said.
“Human trafficking is one of the worst crimes in the society and no one should really find themselves in that situation,” she said.
Van der Walt said they are working together with the Department of Social Development and Tshwane Metro Police Department and NPA to combat human trafficking.
She said the month of October is dedicated towards raising awareness about human trafficking and that they have several weapons to fight human trafficking, the first of which is prevention by raising awareness in the community about human trafficking.
“We raise awareness in this regard among small children, schools and universities so that the community can prevent itself against this scourge,” she said, pointing out that human trafficking is a violent crime and very horrific.
“We also do community- outreach programmes and work together closely with law enforcement agencies like the Hawks and SAPS and we do information- gathering into commercial sex trade because 80 % of human trafficking incidents is found in the sex trade industry, and we are also involved in efforts to rescue victims of human trafficking from their captors,” said Van der Walt.
“We have cases of many people who have been smuggled in and out of the country including children and organised crime is at the centre of this crime,” she said.
Van der Walt said there is cross-border and inter-provincial human trafficking syndicates, and Gauteng is the hotspot of this kind of crime.
“Lots of these brothels are also the hotspot of human trafficking where even young girls are trafficked and the predator in many cases familiarises himself and grooms the would-be victim by offering her a job before eventually trafficking them and subjecting them to rape, drugs and prostitution,” she said.
Founder of Voice in Action, Kgothatso Moloto appealed to South Africans to wake up to the scourge of human trafficking and pointed out that it is not only children who get trafficked but adults as well.
Colonel Philani Kwalase of the Hawks, who had also attended the awareness campaign event, told Tshwane Talks that he and his colleagues support the awareness campaign initiative and that the police are the main stakeholders in the fight against human trafficking.
“People must understand the concept of human trafficking because human trafficking doesn’t only mean one must come from a foreign country but that one can be trafficked right inside the country in one’s own backyard in the form of hard labour,” said Kwalase.
“Sometimes victims are abducted from the townships and brought to the CBD area for muthi-ritual killings and body parts transplant,” he said.
TIP member Ephraim Charles Lwanga said his organisation focuses mainly on youths who have been trafficked from neighboring African countries and that they have managed to raise awareness regarding human trafficking especially in Marabastad.
A local male residents opined that human trafficking is caused by foreigners and that the government must get rid of foreigners and by so doing this human trafficking phenomenon would stop.
Another male resident cautioned ladies to be careful when applying for jobs because in some cases these jobs are a scam and human traffickers are behind these job advertisements.
Yet another male resident blamed local South African ladies for the scourge of human trafficking because according to him these ladies don’t want to fall in love with South African men but prefer Nigerians who have money, but these Nigerians end up kidnapping them and selling them off to other countries as prostitutes.