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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The politics of child prostitution in South Africa
Author:De Sas Kropiwnicki, Zosa OlenkaISNI
Year:2012
Periodical:Journal of Contemporary African Studies (ISSN 0258-9001)
Volume:30
Issue:2
Pages:235-265
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:prostitution
children
government policy
social history
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589001.2012.664417
Abstract:This paper argues that policies, interventions and discourses pertaining to child prostitution have been guided by overarching political agendas that have masked the underlying structural basis of this phenomenon. These political agendas have shifted in accordance with the locus of power, control and resistance in South Africa since the 19th century. The paper identifies distinct periods in which child prostitution was used to legitimate policies in favour of social control rather than social development. In the colonial period, child prostitution was used to justify stricter controls on adolescent and adult women's sexuality and movement by colonial and traditional patriarchal authorities. In the colonial and apartheid periods, policies on child prostitution were informed by fears of miscegenation and sexually transmitted diseases, which were used to support the racist and oppressive legislation of sexual behaviour. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the issue of child prostitution was 'discovered' in the press both to deflect attention from the incarceration of juveniles during the 1987 State of Emergency and as the basis upon which liberals attacked the apartheid State. In the latter half of the 1990s and 2000s, it was used by the African National Congress (ANC) government to attack the moral legacy left by the apartheid State and in turn deflect responsibility for the root causes of the phenomenon. Furthermore, child prostitution was used to support stricter controls on adult sex workers and on the movement of undocumented migrants. This politicized and sensationalist approach has undermined detailed analysis of the root causes of child prostitution and children's motivation for engaging in prostitution. For many children in South Africa it has been one means by which they can exercise their agency and power in order to ensure their survival in the face of high levels of socioeconomic deprivation and rapid sociocultural change. The paper therefore proposes a shift from policies and interventions centred on social control to social development, based on an in-depth understanding of children's agency, risk and resilience. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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