Ahead of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, I had blogged about the proliferation of nonsensical press reports claiming 40 000 women would be trafficked into the country during that event.
Shortly after the tournament ended, NPR reported on the startling lack of incidences of trafficking, given all the scare-mongering.
Then yesterday I was amused to read a transcript of an exchange during a meeting of the South African Parliament’s Justice portfolio committee between MPs and a government official. The gist is: no trafficking happened during the World Cup. Here’s an extract:
Mr J Jeffery (ANC) asked if there were any trafficking instances that were detected and prosecuted during the 2010 World Cup. Ms Lekubo-Wilderson replied that there were no trafficking cases that went to court.
The Chairperson said that there was a difference between detecting, and actually taking cases to court, and asked for an appropriate answer. Ms Lekubo-Wilderson said that she was unsure of the position of the South African Police Services (SAPS), but that, if any crimes were detected, SAPS would have had to refer any cases to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) for assessment. The Chairperson again asked if there were any cases of human trafficking detected. Ms Lekubo-Wilderson replied that there were none detected through the courts. Mr Jeffery said that this answer was not satisfactory. Detection of instances would be done through SAPS and the DSD. He asked if there had been any reports from police or social workers. The Chairperson asked if, as a matter of fact, there were any cases of human trafficking that had, up until now, been detected.
Ms Lekubo-Wilderson replied that the Department of Labour had reported that this department had not detected any human trafficking, and DSD was busy compiling a report. The Chairperson interrupted and asked if it would be correct to say that to date, DOJ did not have any records of human trafficking. Ms Lekubo-Wilderson replied in the affirmative. The Chairperson said that the matter should be left at that point.
Of course the media left it long ago. Aside from that NPR report, there’s been widespread media silence. Not one single headline blaring “Our Overblown Sensationalism Proves Unfounded!”
Surprise surprise.
Okay, yes, the media should cover that it turned out to be a non-story. But I don’t think it’s fair to be so critical of the early stories suggesting it might be a problem. I have a friend who helps trafficked girls escape from prostitution in Miami, and major sporting events are always a huge problem for them – they can track the upsurge in trafficking before the Super Bowl or whatever on Craigslist because of the out-of-state phone numbers attached to the solicitations. There was definitely some stereotyping in the coverage of this issue at the World Cup, but it is a real problem. Kudos to South Africa for their efforts to stop it.
@Texas: You are blatantly setting up a strawman here. No one is arguing that human trafficking is not a real problem. The point is that various parties, advocacy groups and media in particular, falsely created a story about human trafficking and the World Cup in South Africa. As several discussions and analyses in this blog and other outlets demonstrated, there was absolutely no evidence that there were plans afoot to exploit the World Cup by human traffickers. If you recall, prior to the WC figures about the number of women who were either already in transit to South Africa or were to soon be sent of were thrown around. However upon investigation the numbers turned out to be based on unverifiable and flimsy sources, mostly speculation.
The point is to critique the tendency to sometimes create stories out of unverifiable and speculative material and present them as fact. This does damage not only to the reputation of the media, but more importantly trivializes the seriousness of human trafficking by making it fodder for headline grabbing stories based on innuendo and sensationalism.
@TexasinAfrica: I agree with @ekapa that bringing up the Super Bowl or events in Miami is not applicable here. This was about how we talk about Africa, South Africa in this case, and the World Cup. And as Brett reports on that the media have been awful.
I do not wish to argue that trafficking does not exist or is not a problem. It is. But the claims of trafficking with respect to the ‘sex trade’ have been vastly overblown, to the extent that often trafficking and sex work are seen as being one and the same thing. Over-hyping of trafficking (and equating it with sex work) is very problematic, as it then begins to distort policy priorities. In the process, real people who need real protection are ignored. For example, sex workers are regularly harassed and even raped and beaten up by police – but nobody seems to care.
Newspapers jumped on the trafficking panic bandwagon, but when an organisation representing sex workers tried to get news coverage of such police harassment, none of the media were interested.
Cool article. It’s about time to find interesting content for a change.