Fighting for mothers who do sex work: An interview with Dudu Dlamini

ABSTRACT

Sex workers in South Africa face numerous forms of stigmatisation. This stigma contributes to isolation from family – even if the sex worker financially supports family members – cruelty and verbal abuse from health workers, and violence at the hands of police, who often profile sex workers. Horribly, feelings of shame, can extend to the children of sex workers as well. Sex workers interviewed for a 2018 Human Rights Watch report ‘Why Sex Work Should be Decriminalized in South Africa’ repeatedly expressed fear that their children would discover they did sex work, and that other people would treat their children badly because of their sex work. This creates a scenario where sex workers feel that, in order to love and care for their children, they have to hide their work. Supporting children is a main reason that marginalised people do sex work in South Africa but this fear prevents many sex workers from proudly joining advocacy efforts for decriminalisation. For this interview, the author of the 2018 report speaks with South African sex worker and advocate, Dudu Dlamini, who runs a project focused on mothers who are also sex workers, to learn more about the problem of self-advocacy for sex workers.

KEYWORDS:

• Sex work
• decriminalisation
• advocacy
• motherhood
• stigma

Acknowledgements

Respectful gratitude for Dudu Dlamini for doing this interview and sharing her experiences and also for her wonderful colleagues at SWEAT and the Sisonke coalition for their inspirational work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For more information about SWEAT, see the organization’s website: http://www.sweat.org.za/.