CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT

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Hillbrow’s shocking underworld of child prostitutes - and the ‘decent’ men who use them, by Dana Snyman

24 September 1992

Louise is a petite 16-year-old made up to look older. She’s waiting on a pavement in the heart of Hillbrow. A Cressida cruises down the street and tops next to her. She totters closer on her high heels, handbag over her shoulder. The middle-aged driver smoking a cigarette leans over and rolls down the passenger window. “Do you want to come with me?” he asks.

“What for?” Louise replies, her eyes avoiding his. “Everything,” he says. He sounds as if he’s in a hurry. “Depends on what you mean by everything,” she says. “You know what I mean.” He looks around nervously. “Come on, get in.” “R15,0” she says. The car door swings open, Louise climbs in and they drive off. She wonders where he’ll take her.

A few days earlier her friend Donna had got into a car with a man who took her to his house. He said he was a doctor, tied her to a bed, took out a scalpel and started cutting her - not deep enough to mutilate her but enough for her to feel pain and cry out. It excited him.

Louise tries to think of something else and prays it will all turn out all right ...

In Soper Street, five blocks away, Jean du Plessis sits on the stoep of an old double-storey house. Day after day he sees men picking up young girls on the streets and outside the clubs. Some of the girls are barely 15.

Two years ago Jean and his wife Adele decided to doe something to try to keep the girls off the streets. They sold their business in Pretoria, moved into the Hillbrow house and turned it into a rehabilitation centre registered with the Department of Health.

Jean, turning from the scene says child prostitution has increased considerably in the past few years, probably because more children are running away from home. “Many of them end up in Hillbrow,” he says. “They’re usually about 14 or 15 and going through a rebellious phase. Some nightclub-owners rent flats for them to have sex with clients.

“We often see men approaching schoolgirls in broad daylight and offering them lots of money to have sex. It’s a great temptation for someone who’s afraid, hungry and insecure. Many can’t resist the approaches.”

That’s why they set up The House: to provide those girls with food and a bed, and to help them before they can get sucked into a world of prostitution and drugs.

“The one thing they all have in common is that they’re looking for love and acceptance. Drugs and sex will satisfy them for a short while. That’s why we try to get them before they get involved with those things,” says Jean.

He and Adele try to live as close as possible to the people of Hillbrow so that they’ll know when a new child arrives on the streets. The would look out of place if they dressed up and handed out pamphlets on street corners, so they wear the Hillbrow uniform of jeans and takkies and speak the slang of Hillbrow.

“Girls who hang out with steamers get addicted to pinks or buttons,” says Jean. “Steamers are the sex-buyers who pick them up, pinks are Wellconal and buttons are Mandrax tablets. The spike (inject) the pinks into their veins. The feeling is called a rush.”

An estimated 6 000 prostitutes work the streets of Johannesburg, collectively earning R17 million to R25 million a month. Jean believes at least a third are under 18. “Research shows that 90 % were between 14 and 16 when they started,” he says. Some earn a lot but the girls who’ve passed through The House could carry their possessions in two shopping bags because it’s a vicious circle. They spend money on drug to build up courage to face more steamers, so that they can buy more drugs ...

A young girl appears on the stoep. She says her name is Gail and that she is 19 but she looks older. Dark rings shadow her eyes. She says she ran away from her rich parents’ comfortable Northern Suburbs home when she was 12.

Her left leg is lame from shooting Wellconal in her groin; sometimes she misses the vein and punctures the muscle. Her friend Rocky watches Jean warily. He has a dragon tattooed on his arm. Jean is worried because it was Rocky who introduced her to prostitution. It was the same old pattern. She was a stranger in Hillbrow, he “took pity” on her, gave her food, a place to sleep and a sympathetic ear.

Then one day he came home with a syringe ... Two weeks later Gail hit the streets for the first time, already an addict. She would use the R150 she earned to buy pinks for herself and Rocky.

“A lot of girls are caught this way,” says Jean. “When the guy has injected Wellconal once or twice it’s all over.” Most of the girls who end up in The House are addicted to this powerful painkiller. At first it’s easy to find a place to inject but it gets more difficult at the veins become punctured and bruised. In desperation the addict plunges the needle deeper and deeper. When there’s no suitable place left on the arms or hands they use the groin.

“You have to push it in deep to find a vein,” says Donna, Louise’s friend, indicating about the length of her forefinger. “The rush seems to come from below, you can’t really describe it. It lasts about 20-25 seconds.” Is it worth it? “No,” she replies, chewing her nails.

She started using Wellconal when she was 15, “just for fun” but couldn’t stop and her school work deteriorated. She moved to Hillbrow when she was 16 and began working at an escort agency.

“Most steamers are rich guys,” she says. “I don’t hate them but I also don’t like them. I was in jail once when I was 16 - I stole a steamer’s revolver. I didn’t want to shoot anyone, I just wanted it. I had sex with five men one night, that was the most. I’m not proud of my life, I want to get out of it, but it’s difficult. I’ve stopped taking pinks, but the other night I had the craving again. It’s like when you want chocolate, only worse. It’s easy to get drugs - you just have to know where. I filled a syringe and then I couldn’t find a vein; I went mad.”

Jean knows Hillbrow the way a farmer knows his fields. “You see that guy,” he says, pointing to a gaunt man with a rucksack over his shoulder on the opposite side of Claim street, “he sells buttons”.

Madonna blares from the speakers at a disco in Tudhope Street. Lights flash and people cluster around the bar, many obviously not older than 16. There is a strange sweet smell in the place: beer, cigarette smoke and dagga. People gyrate on the dance floor.

Many of the young girls who fear to pick up men on the street do their business here, like the one with the mini-dress baring her midriff. The man dancing with her is much older and doesn’t look at home. He leans forward and says something into the girl’s ear and they leave the dance floor. Twenty minutes later they’re back. She goes and sits with her friends and he heads for a chair in a dark corner.

Jean and Adele have plans for The House and are training volunteers to work the streets full-time. “The problem is that to be effective we’ve got to get the girls out of Hillbrow,” he says.

“To do that we need a farm, but we’re struggling to find one. Money is a problem, we’re totally dependent on donations and some months are tough.”

Back in Esselin Street, Jean watches two young girls on the opposite side. A car pulls up. The girls are holding each other’s hands. “They’re new,” says Jean. But in a month or two they’ll probably have forgotten there ever was at time before all this ...

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