Seven portraits of sex workers catch the sun in the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (Sweat) office in Cape Town. Two are no longer alive: Leigh died in 2019, and Angie died during the pandemic.
Limited access to health services, housing, safe workplaces and banking makes sex workers more vulnerable to illness, violence and early death.
Leigh David, who was transgender, told the Sunday Times in 2017 that sex workers seldom live to 40. She died on February 27, a month before her 40th birthday.
Barely a month later, transgender sex worker Ayanda Denge was murdered in Cape Town. She was the chair of Sweat, an advocacy organisation.
“Most trans women are unhoused and have died from violence,” said transgender sex worker and 2025 pageant winner Jackye (her working name), 38. “It is very dangerous on the streets ... We hope this will change if sex work is legal.”
“Decriminalisation would make a huge difference to us, and it would be the first time in the history of Africa,” said Constance Mathe, the national co-ordinator of Sweat and the Asijiki Coalition, which was launched to take the fight for legalisation to the courts. The Western Cape High Court will hear the case 18 to 20 May.
Advocates of decriminalisation argue that laws criminalising sex work are unconstitutional and violate rights to health care, equality, freedom from violence and security of the person.
Sweat has been campaigning for the full decriminalisation of adult consensual sex work since its launch.
Opponents of decriminalisation, including the NGO Embrace Dignity, argue that it would encourage trafficking, exploitation, abuse and violence. But Human Rights Watch research shows that decriminalising sex work “makes it easier for trafficking survivors to seek help”.
Prohibition forces sex work underground where it is vulnerable and trampled on
— Gordon Isaacs, retired UCT prof of clinical social work
Gordon Isaacs, a former University of Cape Town professor of clinical social work development, said that in countries where prostitution is allowed sex workers “no longer fear the police… When they know that somebody is underage, they report it. Prohibition forces sex work underground, where it is vulnerable and trampled on.”
Isaacs said people often got into the work because of disenfranchisement and limited options to earn a living.
“Sex work may offer a better income than domestic work or gardening... but they need safe spaces. Working and living on the streets contributes to anxiety, high blood pressure, poor diet and depression.”
Isaacs, a co-founder of Sweat, said most sex workers now operate online. Estimates put the number at about 150,000 in South Africa.
Mathe said at the end of August the National Prosecuting Authority told the Asijiki Coalition there would be a moratorium on prosecutions.
One sex worker, Priscilla [her working name], 55, said the income she received meant she could send money to her parents and siblings in the Eastern Cape.
“Decriminalisation will help us,” she said. “The laws fasten the hands and feet of sex workers, and we experience stigma and violence. It is more difficult to access health services and open a bank account,” she said.
Priscilla, who has been a sex worker for about 30 years, now has a bank account but used to have to hide her money under a mattress.
“People should know we are not selling our bodies. We are selling sex, and nobody is buying our bodies.”
Jackye does outreach in Cape Town, handing out condoms and “safe sex pleasure packs” to sex workers. “I thought beautiful people had to be skinny until I started modelling in the Cape Town Pride,” an annual LGBT+ event.
Her confidence matches her flamboyant pink dress, demanding people’s attention even on a Friday night in the CBD.
Sex workers and trans people are among those hit by USAID funding cuts for HIV, TB and other treatment programmes. The cuts could result in “an expected 600,000 additional deaths in the next 10 years”, researchers warned in the South African Medical Journal online in April.
In New Zealand, where sex work was decriminalised in 2003, sex workers report better working conditions, said Sweat media advocacy officer Megan Lessing, noting the decriminalisation movement was gaining momentum globally.
Landmark court cases
S.H, an anonymous sex worker, is applicant No 1 in the case to decriminalise sex work filed in May 2024 in the Western Cape High Court, supported by Sweat and Section 27.
Revisions to the criminal law started in 2022 after the Sexual Offences Act was repealed. Kgalalelo Masibi, spokesperson for the justice department, said stakeholders were being consulted. “The draft bill will be published for public consultation before it is introduced to parliament … and it will have a regulatory framework.”
Applicants want the court to find the laws that criminalise adult consensual sex work — including sections of the Sexual Offences Act of 1957 and the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 2007 — violated the constitution. The state is not opposing the case.
Organisations such as Sonke Gender Justice, the Treatment Action Campaign and Amnesty International have been admitted as friends of the court to provide expert evidence.
Those opposing the application are Embrace Dignity, Sanctuary for Families, Equality Now and Coalition Against Trafficking in Women International. Some of these argue for an “equality model law”, such as legislation adopted by Sweden, France and Canada, which criminalises the clients of sex workers and supports sex workers in finding other employment.
Embrace Dignity’s Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge said: “More prostituted people per capita means more violence, more trafficking and more deaths,” but research does not support this statement. Instead, said Lucy O’Connell, Médecins Sans Frontières spokesperson, full decriminalisation is the most effective way to protect sex workers’ health and safety.
Instead, said Lucy O’Connell, Médecins Sans Frontières spokesperson, full decriminalisation is the most effective way to protect sex workers’ health and safety.
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