The BBC reports that South Africa is considering legalising prostitution for the 2010 World Cup.
In January, MP George Lekgetho called for prostitution to be legalised during the tournament.
“It is one of the things that would make it a success,” he said.
You know I would have hoped that prostitution would have nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a football tournament.
Prostitution goes hand-in-hand with people trafficking, drugs and child abuse, the trafficking provides the criminals with new prostitutes, the drugs are used to control the prostitutes and children command the highest prices, simplistic, but accurate.
My instinct is always to legalise prostitution, taking the crime away from the victims, the prostitutes, the crime lies with the punters and pimps, however where it only that simple. I have difficulty with the basic premise of prostitution, which relies on a man abusing a woman for financial gain, and that gain is almost exclusively not to the benefit of the woman, but to the profit of the pimps and criminal gangs. I know prostitutes are not exclusively men but the clients certainly are.
The idea of legalising sex workers was first proposed last year by police commissioner Jackie Selebi, who has since been suspended over corruption charges.
Which should leave you under no illusion on the fate of prostitutes in South Africa or anywhere else come to that.
Still I shouldn’t be surprised as there was a massive influx of prostitutes drafted/coerced into Germany for the 2006 World Cup and what is going to happen in London in 2012? God, aren’t men nasty.
I have used a photo of a statue by Abastenia St. Leger Eberle called White Slave, which depicts a young prostitute with her pimp. Whilst no longer as controversial as when exhibited in 1913 at the New York Armory show, the work certainly has something about it, and makes one think about, lust, greed, the seamy side of life and what prostitution really means. After the New York Armory show, the work vanished. In the 1970′s a plaster cast of the work turned up and two bronzes were made, sadly the plaster cast was destroyed and of the bronzes?