ABSTRACT
This piece features the voices of sex worker participants in a collaborative project between the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS) at the University of the Witwatersrand and the Sisonke National Sex Workers Movement in South Africa. The ACMS and Sisonke envisioned the Izwi Lethu newsletter project as an opportunity for researchers to learn more about sex workers’ lived experiences and for activists to gather stories to inform their work promoting social justice. The newsletter partnership began in 2015 and continued until Sisonke took over in 2019, fulfilling the newsletter’s tagline ‘a newsletter by sex workers for sex workers.’ But did the collaboration help Sisonke promote social justice or benefit the participants? The authors brought together Izwi Lethu writers who are still active in Sisonke to reflect on the project. While this discussion and critique of the transcript were meant to take place in person, as in Izwi Lethu workshops, the global pandemic limited meetings. Revision of the discussion was still collaborative, conducted over the phone, e-mail, and WhatsApp. The discussion reveals some of the successes, challenges, and unintended consequences of the use of creative writing to promote social justice and the collaboration of researchers and activists.
Researchers from the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS) at the University of the Witwatersrand and activists from the Sisonke National Sex Workers Movement in South Africa came together in 2014 to plan a collaborative project with the hope that it would benefit both sides. Researchers, including the first author, wanted to learn more about migrant sex workers’ lived experiences and expand on the first author’s use of creative writing as a method to collect data (Schuler, Citation2017). Sisonke’s activists, including the second author, wanted to gather stories to inform their work advocating for sex workers’ rights and have another means of sharing information with their members. After researchers and activists decided to produce a newsletter, the first author presented the idea at a Sisonke Creative Space meetingFootnote1 in Johannesburg. The sex workers there voted on the title Izwi Lethu: Our Voice with the subheading ‘a newsletter by sex workers for sex workers.’ The title Izwi Lethu, which means ‘our voice’ in Zulu, was important to the sex workers, who are often talked about but rarely heard.
The project built on the work of other MoVE: method:visual:explore projects, which are housed at the ACMS and explore different ways of conducting research (Schuler & Oliveira, Citation2019). The researchers hoped that the newsletter, which had lower costs than other arts-based projects, would be one that Sisonke could continue once the research had ended. The first author facilitated the workshops with this in mind. At the beginning of each workshop,Footnote2 the facilitator discussed story writing. Then participants had time to write stories in the workshop. Many continued to write and revise their stories outside of the workshop as well. Participants were given cameras, with which they took photographs to accompany their stories. Participants read their work aloud to the group, and a discussion followed each story, during which participants critiqued one another’s work and helped one another with editing. English was not the first or even second language of most of the participants, and the revision process often included the group collectively translating words and ideas. Participants repeated this process until they were happy with their stories. Finally, participants typed their stories and chose the photos that would be featured in the newsletter. The participants were meant to gain skills through this process, which would benefit not only themselves but also Sisonke’s movement. Some participants went on to work for Sisonke.
While the facilitator (the first author) led the workshops, a Sisonke staff member (usually the second author) also attended every workshop. The first author encouraged participants to write about whatever they wanted, which resulted in a range of stories from those about coming to Johannesburg to engage in sex work to those about informal gold mining outside of the city, from instructions on joining PrEP clinical trials to advice about living with HIV, from personal narratives about the death of a friend to a journalistic piece about an informal settlement called Plasticview. These stories show sex workers’ multi-faceted lives and interests. While the researcher wanted participants to have control over their topics, the Sisonke staff member wanted to make sure that Sisonke events were covered and that Sisonke’s message of the decriminalisation of sex work, which is illegal in South Africa, was prominent. These aims were rarely at odds but did sometimes create tension.
The first author facilitated these newsletter workshops in Johannesburg for the first four years of the project (2015–2018). Sisonke’s national communications officer, who is based in Cape Town, took over the project in 2019. Before the transition, the national communications officer came to Johannesburg for a workshop and was given the newsletter template. Two of the reporters who had been through the workshop with the first author stayed on as Izwi Lethu writers, but stories were also collected from other provinces throughout South Africa. A new Sisonke national communications officer started in 2020. The transition from an academic-activist collaboration to an activist-led project has seemed successful, but what do the participants think?
The authors brought together several participants who have written for Izwi Lethu and now work for Sisonke to discuss some of the successes and challenges of the use of creative writing as a tool to promote social justice and the collaboration of researchers and activists. The first discussion was in person and the second one was through Zoom. Everyone in the discussion reviewed and critiqued the transcript through email and WhatsApp, which gave participants the opportunity to refine some of their statements and help decide what would be included in this piece. The two discussions have been combined and shortened for readability.
These voices of Izwi Lethu helped lead the direction of the discussion and highlighted some of what was lost when the researchers left the project but also the benefits of the sex worker organisation taking the lead. Despite challenges and changes to the process, the transition of the collaboration to being activist-run has shown that researchers and activists can work together for the benefit of both.
Introduction
I’m Greta, and I facilitated Izwi Lethu from 2015 to 2018.
Hi. My name is Ziyanda, and I’m a Sisonke peer educator. I started to write for Izwi Lethu in 2018 until 2019.
Hi. My name is Sbuda. I’m a former Izwi Lethu writer and a Sisonke peer educator. I was with Izwi Lethu in 2017.
Hi. My name is Katlego. I’m currently with Izwi Lethu. I’m also part of the editorial team. And I am Sisonke media liaison and advocacy officer for Gauteng Provence.
If you said to someone, ‘I’m an Izwi Lethu reporter,’ and they said, ‘What is Izwi Lethu?’ How would you respond?
It’s a newsletter that we’re talking about us sex workers and what is happening in sex workers’ lives on the ground. And Izwi Lethu is the newsletter that we write so that we can push for the decriminalisation of sex work.
I would tell them that Izwi Lethu is a form of a tool that is sex worker led. And then it is used to sensitise the community and to raise issues around stigma and discrimination that sex workers face and also to enhance the better understanding of sex workers’ human and health rights and the general knowledge that sex workers might need in the line of duty.
I would say that it is a newsletter that is sex worker led for sex workers and everyone in general whereby sex workers write their stories expressing their feelings and also pushing for decriminalisation.
You said it’s for sex workers and for everyone. When you write for Izwi Lethu, who do you imagine your audience to be?
Our audience can be just the general population. We made the decision to remove the tagline ‘a newsletter by sex workers for sex workers’ because we felt it was only directed to sex workers.Footnote3 We removed the slogan so the general population can feel free engaging with Izwi Lethu. And then we also started inviting guest writers who are non-sex workers but are doing work that contributes to the work that sex workers do in the country, including those who also have worked toward achieving equal rights for LGBTI people. These guest writers share their experiences through the lens of advocacy.
Limited resources
Do you think that Izwi Lethu is able to reach a broad audience?
No.
It’s based on the funding that Izwi Lethu is getting. Printing costs a lot. But it’s being shared in Sisonke’s workshops. There is a part in the agenda where the coordinators read one or two articles that they can engage with the participants on the specifics.
So you said funding is one challenge to get more printed? Are there other ways that we could get more people to read Izwi Lethu?
I think by sharing the linkFootnote4 and also sharing the link on Sisonke pages and other networks that we have.
A sex worker radio station, as well. We can reach more people like that.
If we were to strike a deal with a community radio station – whereby we invite people who actually do sex work so they can share to the general public, but anonymously – we can also enhance the audience that we are trying to reach. Participants could share their stories through voice notesFootnote5 because it’s a very accessible service. Sex workers have WhatsApp. This can be circulated through that.
Space to work
Katlego, in 2016, you wrote a reflection on the first year of Izwi Lethu: ‘I am thinking for future recommendations, it will be nice to have field reporters that will interview and interact in story writing with sex workers at their safe spaces. As at times board rooms and offices can be very intimidating to sex workers that have never worked in an office space.’ After that year, we moved to the Yeoville Recreation Centre.Footnote6 Did that help create a safer space?
Remember when we had our first Izwi Lethu workshop that was in Braamfontein before Sisonke moved our offices to Ghandi Square?Footnote7 One participant was emotional during the editing of the stories. Remember the first phase is just telling the story, then the writing with their own hands, then the part they type and edit their own work, all those processes of editorial work? One sex worker was quite emotional to say that she had never thought at the age of forty-four years old, she would sit in front of the computer. Sometimes office space can intimidate sex workers in a way that they would want to behave in a manner that they are not free enough to give the full story. My reflection was based around that incident whereby a sex worker was emotional and cried. She was asking for pictures to send home to the Eastern CapeFootnote8 so the family can see that for the first time now she has touched a computer.
In that story, there’s the pride of working with the computer in an office, wanting to capture that moment and send it back home, but are you saying it is also uncomfortable since it is such a different experience to some of the stories that sex workers are trying to tell?
It can be quite exciting, but it can be quite intimidating. Because we are speaking mostly of women who have no idea of being in an office space. To them, it’s an emotional experience. That’s why she was quite emotional. But I also felt that the office space can be quite intimidating because most of the stories happened under the tree in the parks, in bedrooms, in the streets, in clubs. These are some of the environments that sex workers are more comfortable in, speaking as they want. I remember one participant that I interviewed, she was like, ‘For me to continue with this interview, can I have just one Black Label beer? Because if I’m not drunk, some of the things that I want to tell you, I will really tell you with beer so at least I can be in my own comfort zone.’ Sex workers can be in office space and out of office space, the emotions are not the same.
Is it because in an office space, you’re expected not to talk about certain things like sex or beer?
I think so. Office space can be quite intimidating to sex workers, but it’s just a matter of us making sure that we engage with them prior before we pull them into an office space because some would even be scared to ask for cigarette time. Sometimes sex workers cannot even ask for tea or body breaks, they feel that they are not professional.
Katlego, if you’re leading a workshop, you’re aware of things in a way that I wasn’t. Are there other things that could have made the workshop experience better?
When journalists are interviewing sex workers, they go into a sex worker space and then want sex workers to wear what the journalist feels sex workers should wear. It can be quite challenging because, when sex workers see themselves in newspapers they’re wearing miniskirts, something inappropriate. So Izwi Lethu brings a different approach whereby sex workers pride themselves with the work that they did with Izwi Lethu, and then they were shown in a more dignified manner, including their faces were hidden, they were dressed appropriately. These are some of the different lessons learned during the Izwi Lethu process. Sex workers were like, ‘I can show my husband this.’ It’s unlike that newspaper we must pay for. This one is for free, but it represents our work more professionally.
An office could be too formal a place for sex workers to tell their stories, but a barroom could give a limited picture of a sex worker’s life. What is the best space for sex workers to feel free to tell their stories?
As Katlego said, this thing is in two ways. For me, in my hot spot, it’s where I’m going to feel free because I’m talking about something I am doing at the same spot. But, Greta, you are not a sex worker. When I’m talking with you at the office, I’m going to feel like you’re going to judge me. I’m being formal, but the words coming from my mouth … it’s not what I look like as you are looking at me. At a hot spot, where I am working, I’ll be wearing my miniskirt, and you know what I’m doing there. And what I’m talking there, it’s going to be suitable.
I feel like office spaces are intimidating to most people, not only sex workers. In order for us to get stories or information from sex workers, we will need a space where they’re more comfortable. Office spaces are intimidating. It makes you not to be able to express yourself because it’s an office space. You have to be quiet. There are objects that you are even scared to touch. It’s always best when we go to their hot spots where they’re working or where we do our creative space, because they are used to those spaces.
When I was running workshops, we tried different spaces, even at Wits University. That also led to challenges with the security at Wits giving participants a hard time accessing campus. So we moved around, trying to find the place where everyone would be comfortable. Now that Sisonke is running Izwi Lethu, is Sisonke more sensitive to sex worker needs like that?
I think sex workers will be free with Sisonke – wherever they take them. No problem with Sisonke because they are sex workers. We are talking the same language.
Transition and changes to the process
I also like that Sisonke is now in charge of Izwi Lethu because Sisonke is a sex worker movement for sex workers. But what I feel like, it has kind of changed a bit. Because the last time it was ACMS, we were updated most of the time when they were going to throw our stories into the newsletter. But now I feel like there is a kind of distance.
After the ACMS left, there were a lot of changes, including the template. It didn’t look and feel like Izwi Lethu. You know the sex workers were attached to it. There were a lot of changes. In terms of editing, you remember what we used to do? We would go through Sbuda’s story, edit word by word until we said, ‘This is final.’ Then we would still do everybody collectively, grammar, everything. Sbuda would be happy. But things changed. People just wrote and sent it to Cape Town.Footnote9 The communications officer decides to put this one in or not because now we have media liaison officers from provincesFootnote10 also sending stories.
One of the complaints about how we were doing Izwi Lethu before was that it was only stories from Johannesburg. So is drawing stories from all over the country a positive change?
It is a positive change. But the part by which we would critique each other’s stories … it was a skill – how to construct sentences in a way that it’s readable, to bring out the msocoFootnote11 of the story. Remember, we would say if the msoco is not there, then we as a team would assist you collectively to say, ‘but I think the msoco is when he opens the cow.’ We need to know.
Yes, as Greta used to teach us how to write: You first said who, why, when, all those things. That’s what you teach us, how to write a story.
Editing takes time. We spent more time editing in the workshop than writing.
Yeah, that was the vein and the blood of the workshop. There's no back and forth anymore. They start asking for people to send stories direct. The stories they use, the participants who wrote them needed to contribute things like msoco. They were missing some of the training and the skills that we were exchanging in workshops, so that at least in the future, participants can have better writing skills.
‘The exchanging of skills’ is a great way to describe the workshop. Did the editing process help you better express what you wanted to say? Or, since so many people were giving input, did the editing process make the stories sound less like your own work?
The editing part never made me feel less because when we wrote the stories, we did not submit and then the stories came edited. It was us who were editing the stories. Remember we would write stories and then exchange and start editing, and we would also be laughing and playing around with words and at the same time bettering our writing skills.
Editing our own stories made me feel much better about writing things. And I now know how to start a story. For example, now as I am writing my reports at Sisonke, I know what to write because of the skill I got from Izwi Lethu.
And do you still read over your own work – like reports for Sisonke – and edit it?
Yes. I do. When we’re writing our own report, it’s when I remember that this must go after that – as you were teaching us.
Remember, I was not fully equipped when it comes to editing. At some point, you write your own story and find that there’s nothing wrong. But when you focus on reading what you wrote, you find some faults that need to be edited in terms of grammar and paragraphing and all that, so I learned a lot from editing back then, which I’m still using today.
Tension over topics
The ACMS sees Izwi Lethu as a way of conducting research with sex workers not only about them. And as a way to gain knowledge about sex workers while also trying to do something that benefits sex workers. But we don’t know if sex worker participants feel that this is working, if it was helpful for the ACMS to partner with Sisonke to launch this newsletter.
I think it was helpful for ACMS to come on board and also bring Izwi Lethu as a tool that has changed so many mindsets. I remember in one meeting that I attended – I didn’t realise how much power Izwi Lethu carried – people went for their lunch, and when I came into the board room and put Izwi Lethu out all over, people started browsing through Izwi Lethu up to the point whereby they start asking me questions. And then the facilitator felt like I’m hijacking their space because everyone was like, ‘Wow! You mean these are really sex workers?’ I said, ‘These are stories that you will never find in the media, told by sex workers, writing their stories themselves.’ Then people were like, ‘Wow! This is powerful. We’ve never seen such work!’ I was quite impressed.
It is impressive! I was impressed by the diversity of topics. Ziyanda, you wrote about motherhood. Sbuda, you had a cooking column. A powerful thing about Izwi Lethu is that it isn’t just about sex work. I would introduce Izwi Lethu as being ‘by sex workers for sex workers’ and would tell you that I wanted to learn about sex workers’ lives. We held the workshops in Sisonke spaces, with Sisonke representatives. Did you ever feel pressured to write about sex work or certain topics in the workshop?
No, we didn’t feel pressure because we wrote about things that we knew and some things that we went through. It was no pressure because we did it on our own. And we like to do it.
We never felt pressure. And I never wrote any stories about sex work. I feel like the stories that I wrote might have shown people that it’s not always about sex work. We’ve got a life besides being a sex worker. I remember writing the story of my calling to accept ancestors and let them use me by showing their good work through the spiritual ways.Footnote12 Besides being a sex worker, I’m still a brother. I’m still a father. I’m still an uncle. I have family I have to cook for at the end of the day.
Katlego and I were both at the workshops. Even though ACMS and Sisonke both want to promote social justice, we still have different agendas. Did you feel any tension there?
No. There’s no tension there.
Aye! I felt like, when the ACMS was involved, decriminalisation of sex work was a bit silenced in the process. It was only few stories. And as much as the stories were focusing on issues that were important to sex workers, I felt that decriminalisation was not that much being entertained. At first it was, and then it went into frozen zone for some time.
Researchers want to know about sex workers’ lived experiences even when their stories or opinions don’t support Sisonke’s values. But it’s a Sisonke newsletter, so there’s potential for tension. Sisonke wants to promote the decriminalisation of sex work, and the ACMS wants stories even if they don’t promote decriminalisation. I know there were some participants early on who weren’t always supportive of decriminalisation.
Yeah, some people didn’t understand what decriminalisation is all about. What can you say? We cannot deny them the right to either. At that point, I felt that Izwi Lethu was like a one-stop-shop newsletter, where we just throw in everything, and maybe we missed certain things that we needed around the decriminalisation of sex work. And that would make my work very hard because I would have to write things that were not decriminalisation related.
Pride and anonymity
Whether writing about decrim or about a more personal story, most Izwi Lethu writers decided to use pseudonyms. But names came up a lot in our workshops. There was a tension for writers between wanting to use their real names out of pride in their work and also not wanting to use their real names because of the stigma of sex work.
For me to use my real name, no. I don’t go with it. Because some of the stories that happened to me on the street, I do tell sex workers just to make them alert that they must know that there’s such a guy who’s doing this and that. Maybe it happens that I write the story and then they will go and say, ‘It’s Ziyanda.’ But if I am using another name, they can say, ‘This story’s similar to Ziyanda’s story.’
Using your real name, I don’t think it’s a good thing because. Like Ziyanda mentioned, to protect someone’s identity.
Some people want to use their real name. Do you think it’s wrong for researchers to say, ‘No, you can’t’?
No.
Maybe. We are not sure. It can depend on the person. If he or she wants to use a real name or fake name.
What if I want to use my real name in Izwi Lethu, but I’m good friends with this other person who doesn’t want to use her real name. And if this other person’s boyfriend reads Izwi Lethu and says, ‘Oh, your friend’s a sex worker? Wait, you’re doing catering with this person on the weekends! What’s going on?’ Using your real name has the potential to out other people.
You see, yes.
Absolutely.
Other people, they like to see their name in the paper, ‘This is me!’ And they get excited. ‘Ministers, they are reading about my name! Me!’
I also use my own name in the sex work newsletter. But there’s nothing wrong. I don’t have a problem with my name being on a sex worker newsletter. Others might have a problem with it.
I’ve noticed sometimes sex workers get so comfortable that they’re caught between excitement and this space whereby they’re so comfortable where they want to out themselves to the world without thinking about the future of what they’re doing. I remember, they outed one sex worker on SABC.Footnote13 We warned her, ‘Are you sure?’ She took that risk of outing herself. That was four years ago, and now it’s coming back to her because it’s there. And SABC is saying she signed the consent form. There is nothing they can do. So now whatever interview she was doing with SABC, it’s part of the archives. She realised, ‘I messed up,’ because now, the family’s fighting in Zimbabwe.
People have got DStvFootnote14 across the country. They’re watching these shows; they see you. It’s challenging.
Advocacy
Sbuda, you mentioned that you didn’t write about sex work for Izwi Lethu, and I was just going over your story about becoming a chef. You published that story next to a recipe. And I remember Katlego had mentioned that Sisonke leadership was surprised there was a recipe in Izwi Lethu. Do you see stories like this as supporting sex worker advocacy?
What I felt like at the time I chose to write that article is that most stories were kind of sad stories. When I picked that story, it was a thing where I would show people that not everything is all about how we started doing sex work, how are we still doing it, how hurt are we, how vulnerable we are. There’s also something good that sex workers are doing – like doing for the community – so that people must also see that it’s not always about being a sex worker wearing a miniskirt, waiting for the clients. We also do something with the money that we get from sex work. I just wanted to bring that understanding to the community about who sex workers really are. Besides being a sex worker, you are still a human being. We do other things. We have families; we have kids. They must know that besides sex work, there are other things we are equipped at doing.
I also wanted to revisit a sad story of Ziyanda’s, ‘Mlungu Boom to Us.’ Despite the depicting a traumatic incident – the client beats you – that story, or rather the way you told it, made us laugh. You re-enacted the client hitting you with sound effects. You said, ‘Boom,’ which made us laugh. I remember feeling bad about laughing because it was a scary moment. It’s hard to share any kind of story with a group of people, even more so if you were hurt. To tell that story, to write about it, and workshop it in a group with a researcher, is that retraumatising for you to workshop that experience?
The story was really traumatising. But I felt like I must write about this story to let the girls outside know that there are such people who are doing this thing to us as sex workers. And at the same time – remember my ending? It was with the cops that rescue us. I was trying to show the readers and sex workers that not everything is about the police who are taking our money and taking our condoms. Some police take care of us. My story it was to alert the sex workers on the ground that there are some people – because we don’t know, maybe we were going to be trafficked by those clients, or maybe we were going to be killed, and nobody was going to know where we went. But for me to write that story, I wanted to tell the girls that they must be careful where are they going. And sometimes they must appreciate the cops.
Even though it was hard to share, you did it for other sex workers to know. Is it fair for a researcher like me to then take that story and share it with other researchers?
Yes, I think it’s fair because even if you guys as researchers want to know how vulnerable we are on the streets so that you can see that work of decrim for us, because you heard from the horse’s mouth what is happening on the street with the client.
You end that story with advice; many Izwi Lethu stories end this way. Can anyone think of a time when a sex worker expressed appreciation for something they learned in Izwi Lethu?
One incident that I remember was when sex workers approached me in a workshop saying they didn’t understand the difference between stigma and discrimination and decriminalisation. Because those are quite new words to them, they thought it’s all the meaning of one word. It was quite a funny moment because they were like, ‘No, Katlego, us we want to be discriminated.’ But they didn’t understand that discrimination is a whole different word and decriminalisation is another word. They were quite excited to say, ‘We see these words, can you explain?’ So those are some of the high moments for me to say we might take those words as simple, but somebody out there didn’t understand the difference between the words because they have the same kind of sounds.
That makes me think Izwi Lethu is a wonderful advocacy and teaching tool because academics need to learn more about what sex workers are thinking, like how intimidating an office space can be for an interview. And sex workers, to be part of an advocacy movement, need to learn certain words like decriminalisation if they want to fight for decriminalisation. Do you think we’re able to connect those worlds through something like Izwi Lethu?
Yeah, I think Izwi Lethu did play a role. Remember the column around guest writers? Like the doctor who managed to make time and wrote an article for Izwi Lethu around reproductive health – these are some of the things around which sex workers themselves wouldn’t write on their own because it needed someone who has been a doctor. Also the language of the academics, we were quite clear when we want them to write something: ‘We really need you to use words that a sex worker can easily run with by reading your articles.’ These are some of the advocacy pieces of work that we did when we asked academics to write for us.
Yes, it’s not useful to provide information if it isn’t conveyed in a way the audience can understand. We talked a lot about that, specifically word choices for our audience, in workshops. Word choice is also related to voice, which comes up so much in our discussions – and is even in the title Izwi Lethu. I found this quote from Katlego’s story in Issue 6 with another use of the word ‘voice’: ‘It is now in our hands to correct the wrong that the law has done to sex workers. Let us voice all the wrong that has happened and happens to sex workers. We all can change the world.’ I was interested here in how Katlego uses the word ‘voice.’ As academics, as Sisonke members, as Izwi Lethu writers, how can we ‘voice’ the wrongs and how can ‘voicing’ the wrongs lead to change?
I remember when I did my first sensitisation with a first-year nursing student at Wits. We were sensitising the students who are going to be the country’s nurses. And it was quite an important move by the University of Johannesburg to allow sex workers themselves to be the people who engaged around sensitisation with the healthcare workers. Before they can be qualified, they’ve already been sensitised around sex workers’ issues. That on its own was so important. If such strategy was used, regardless of whether nurses, police, doctors, while they are still at the academic level, we would be making sure that the voice of the key population is present in those spaces.
Yeah. I remember also in 2019, Sisonke team went to Pretoria to sensitise the police on sex work. Katlego made sure that before they come from their academy and go to the street, they must know they are going to face sex workers on the street. There are sex workers there, so they must know who are they dealing with outside.
In this work of sensitisation, do you use copies of Izwi Lethu?
When we are doing sensitisation trainings, we take Izwi Lethu materials and other pamphlets to give to people who are being sensitised. I think it is important for us to voice out in sensitising people that are dealing with sex workers because without decriminalisation, we’re still going to be facing lots of stigma and discrimination from the police, from nurses. If we can continue sensitising police officers to understanding sex workers, we also need to get understanding from the ministers on the top because we can’t just sensitise law enforcers and leave out lawmakers. The understanding that we need to get from ministers is that the Department of Health is giving us condoms so we can protect ourselves from STIs, but then the police officers are using condoms as proof that people are doing sex work, which does not make sense. Where is the linkage between the two departments? If we continue voicing out, writing more stories, and there’s a great coordination with Izwi Lethu now with Sisonke so we can give more stories, I think, we’ll get there at some point.
Conclusion
This discussion could not take place in the way it was originally envisioned because of the pandemic. Through one in-person meeting and multiple Zoom calls, WhatsApp messages, emails, and phone calls, the group came to the conclusion that Izwi Lethu is a valuable advocacy tool and a fruitful collaboration between researchers and activists. However, the transition from researcher-led to activist-led newsletter was not seamless and resulted in changes, showing different focuses of the different groups.
A change we discussed at length was the process of the production of the newsletter. The researchers were interested in the process of creating the newsletter – how participants chose stories, how they shared those stories, and how they changed them. The researchers were also interested in supporting the participants and Sisonke through training, which the workshop was intended to do. However, when the activists took over, the focus seemed to shift to the final product of the newsletter. Part of this was the necessity of organising from a different city, Cape Town, the location of Sisonke’s national headquarters. Now Izwi Lethu draws stories from sex workers in different provinces, which the researchers could not have done while still conducting in-depth workshops.
While participants missed the workshops and felt that some of the stories suffered from not going through the additional editing process, they also acknowledged that the workshop space could be intimidating and uncomfortable for sex workers. Now Izwi Lethu features a greater variety of sex worker voices from different provinces. And the stories are written in the spaces where the writers feel most comfortable. Participants felt that the activists were better positioned to respond to sex worker needs than the researchers and were more trusted.
While researchers and activists had different focuses for the process of creating the newsletter, both groups wanted a newsletter that would share the stories of sex workers. All involved believed that Izwi Lethu was a powerful tool for advocacy that could be shared with everyone to change minds and fight for the rights of sex workers and that the collaboration was worth the challenges and tensions of the transition.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Notes
1 Monthly meetings that Sisonke hosts to bring members together.
2 Workshops ran from three to five days depending on the year. The number of participants also varied from workshop to workshop, from the fewest being three and the most being fifteen.
3 This decision was made by the activist-led team after the ACMS had left the project.
4 Issues of Izwi Lethu are posted online. Collaborative issues with the ACMS are available on the MoVE: methods:visual:explore Issuu site (www.issuu.com) and issues since 2019 are available on Sisonke’s resources page (www.sisonke.org.za).
5 Here ‘voice notes’ refers to the voice recording feature on WhatsApp, which is free and popular in South Africa.
6 A community space in a high-density suburb of Johannesburg near where many Sisonke members live and work.
7 Braamfontein is another suburb in Johannesburg near the central business district. Gandhi Square is in the city’s central business district.
8 A province in South Africa.
9 Cape Town is where Sisonke’s national office is.
10 Sisonke has provincial coordinators in five of South Africa’s nine provinces.
11 A slang term for bone marrow but what the Izwi Lethu writers used to describe the meat or juicy part of a story.
12 Sbuda wrote about his calling as a traditional healer in an issue of Izwi Lethu.
13 The South African Broadcasting Corporation, which means it was on a local TV station.
14 A sub-Saharan African direct broadcast satellite service.
References
- Schuler, G. (2017). “At your own risk”: narratives of migrant sex workers in Johannesburg. Urban Forum, 28(1), 27–42. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-016-9282-z
- Schuler, G., & Oliveira, E. (2019). “Something about us for us”: exploring ways ofmaking rearch with sex workers in South Africa. In S. Dewey, I. Crownhurst, & C. Izugbara (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of sex industry research (pp. 222–229). Routledge.