I had no money.
All I wanted was for her to clean me.
She refused to help me and so I left. Instead, I went to the Zimbabwean and Zulu girls, who knew traditional medicine. They told me to take TimJan, which I could buy from the chemist. It is a strong, bitter health juice with a vinegar taste. They told me to drink that, and also lots of hot water.
You drink half a cup of TimJan with lots of water through the night and through the next day, and it cleans out the body. It burns badly in the stomach and is supposed to be drunk in small amounts. But after the things that happened to us in Hillbrow, we would drink the whole bottle. I always hoped, back then, that I would be OK. After what happened to me that time, the girls also told me I should clean out my vagina with Jeyes Fluid.
There were times when we had wars with the Nigerian pimps. It could happen when the girls stuck together. The Zulu and Zimbabwean girls I knew mostly didn’t take drugs so that’s why they could beat up the pimps, to prove what strong hustlers they were. The girls even carried knives. If a girl got robbed by a pimp, the other girls formed a team to chase and catch him.
The Nigerian pimps had drugs to sell to the white clients, but we black girls wanted the white clients to pay better for sex – and we were OK dealing directly with clients.
So that’s also how war might start. After we had got to know a client through a pimp, we would beat up the pimp so he wouldn’t come back to our corner. We would sometimes send out a new girl to entice him to our spot, and then beat him up when he followed her. That’s how we made sure he would stay away.
We also made friends with the drag queens. The drag queens had boyfriends who were gangsters, and the gangsters would fight the tsotsis to protect us. A gangster would come in a ‘gusheshe’, a BMW, with an electric roof and big tyres, and beat up anyone molesting us. So that’s how we girl gangs – the Zulu and Zim and Xhosa girls – owned those streets. Without those roaming pimps, we could sometimes take over the streets of Hillbrow.
But we were never safe.
I would sometimes get to a point when the more high I could get on drugs, the more clients I could handle. Then the realisation would hit: ‘Hey, I can do this on my own! I don’t need no pimp.’
But if you show that kind of arrogance, you get slapped. If you cross the line with a pimp, anything can happen.
Death lived just around the corner.
There was a way I could get off the streets: if a client liked me enough, he could buy me off my pimp. If a client paid R4000, then the pimp would release me. There were always other girls for him to exploit.
The client would then introduce me to a club that he attended regularly. I could start working there, and he would become my regular client. He could then give me a good reference: he could tell others that I’m great, I’m healthy, I’m not a junky and don’t use drugs too much, that I have incredible energy, that I don’t fight. These clients could introduce me to bigger and better clients. Girls brag about these opportunities.
But of course, I wouldn’t be any part of the conversation with the pimp. I never had the power to make my own decisions. After the arrangements were made, both the pimp and the client would tell me what a big favour they were doing me by getting me off the streets.
But even if I was working off the streets, it didn’t mean I was safe. Clients could be as brutal and abusive as pimps, and anything could happen to me when I got into a client’s car.
I was always on my own, always at risk.
Twelve
THE MOST PAINFUL PARTS OF that life were having to experience rapes and sexual intercourse with forced penetration. After these events, I would go to the chemist and get the morning-after pill. Even more than the sex acts themselves, I was angry that I had to try to suck out this stuff that men put into my body.
I soon learnt on the streets that my health had to be taken care of as this career was my money and my survival. I had to look after myself. So, after buying my drugs, I spent most of the rest of my money on health-related maintenance – home remedies, medicines and doctor visits – because the more sex there was, the more doctor’s appointments I needed.
When we needed to, we would collect R500 as a group, and go to the doctor and tell him to clean us. Some Zulu doctors would spray our bums with disinfectant. Or we would buy a special plastic tube with gel which we used for cleaning out the vagina.
Men paid a lot for anal sex; I don’t know why. It was very painful for me. I hated this aspect of satisfying my client, and I always had to go to the doctor afterwards because I would bleed a lot. Mostly, I hated this position because of the way it was done to me: it always felt like rape, and it brought back too many painful memories.
There were other things we street girls learnt to do to look after our health. During my menstrual periods, I used a sponge – just the kind of sponge we use to wash dishes – covered with strong soap to soak up the blood during and after sex. I didn’t like using tampons because they got in the way of my work. I had to be ready at all times, and take all the work I could get – a period was not a good enough reason not to take a client.
After a shift with a client, the sponge would get stuck way up in the vagina. In the morning, I would go to the bath and sit on a bucket of hot steaming water and let the steam go up into the vagina to be absorbed by the sponge so that it gradually oozed its way out of the cavity.
Getting the sponge out was a time when my emotions would kick in, because it really hurt to get it out. The frustrations of the job, and all the hassles – those were the things I would be thinking about as I took this time to sit on a bucket. I always felt anxious doing this, so I would have to calm myself down with a cigarette in my hand, and a zol, trying to straighten out my confused mind.
The sponge was a good thing, but using it could also turn into a bad experience. In my time, I saw some girls who couldn’t get the sponge out. They would smell rotten for days. You needed good friends who cared about you to help you at times like this. But sometimes it was unavoidable, and you could miss out on clients because of this issue when there’s nobody around to help you get the sponge out. We bought braai tongs to use when the sponge got stuck, and that was unpleasant.
We took the morning-after pill to prevent getting pregnant. I only knew my fertile time was ‘before and after’ my periods, and had been told by the shelter mothers in my teens that the bleeding was the result of ‘old eggs breaking’.
I had to be careful I didn’t go back to the same chemist for the morning-after pill, because some chemists would ask for my details. So we girls had to go to different chemists to avoid being discovered as prostitutes. A client might even have to drive me around looking for different chemists!
In the case of a rape, I would immediately go to the clinic and ask the nurse to help clean me up. Some nurses would wait before asking my name, and want to take a report first. I would say, ‘Voetsek. Just clean me up.’
Some nurses, knowing we girls lived on the streets, made it difficult for us to get the medical assistance we needed. We felt that we were just vulnerable girls being subjected to open abuse in society – so sometimes, as a group, we girls would go to the clinic and mess it up to teach them a lesson.
So, after drugs, health was always at the top of the minds of us street girls. If I had any money left over after drugs and medicine, it was used for clothes.
I was now nineteen years old, and had spent some time being pimped on the streets in central Johannesburg. I decided that I wanted to do prostitution by myself, off the streets, and away from the manipulative pimps who had so much power over me.
I needed new clients and I wanted a place where there weren’t a lot of other prostitutes, as there were in Hillbrow and Berea. I asked around for some help, and a friend, one of the girls I knew from Hillbrow, led me to Steve in Benoni.
Steve managed the Benoni fire station and ran the training programme for firemen there. My friend knew the girls who visited their firemen boyfriend
s at the fire station. I was introduced to Steve because I needed a place to stay. Always wearing his blue overalls, Steve welcomed me, with his square Indian face, with eyes that carefully met my own gaze. He allowed me to sleep at the fire station in return for having sex with him.
Unlike the other girls, I didn’t want a fireman boyfriend and I wasn’t just out to have fun with the guys. I wanted clients so I could earn money for my drug habit. And that is how I started working in the clubs of Benoni: when the firemen’s girlfriends went to hang out at the clubs, I hung out with them, making my money privately so that I wouldn’t embarrass them. On weekends, if I wasn’t working, I would just find a place at the fire station to put my head and sleep. Unlike the other girls, I wasn’t there to party.
Benoni was a quiet place, and the fire station was not far from the few night clubs and the mall. We girls would go to one club, Planet Cats, which was near the Benoni lake. It was a cool place, with great DJs who were just starting out.
At Planet Cats, the boys would watch while the girl groupies danced and flirted. I was the one who went to a specific corner, in the back, to play around with a guy who would pay me R150 or R200.
I wasn’t really strict on the price at that point; at nineteen, that was a lot of money for me. I took whatever I could get.
You learn to avoid street problems by hanging out in clubs. You learn that a club is a place to chill out, and you don’t leave until you have a client. That’s how you roll.
I’d buy my first drink, making sure it was a strong one, and then I’d take my time with it until someone bought me my next drink. Because I’d be thinking to myself, ‘You ain’t got no money, girl, to spend on your own drinks!’
My cigarettes saved me. A cigarette is a good way to connect with a person. There’s always somebody smoking. I’d think to myself, ‘I don’t have to carry any lighter because I’m a woman! Some guy will light it.’ And this worked because that’s how I would start chatting to someone. That’s how the conversation would kick in.
Then I’d get drunk or high, and get taken out by a client. I usually wouldn’t know where I was going or what I’d find there. As the client and I walked out together, the bouncer would sometimes tell the clients to use a condom, but the guy would normally just wave it off.
So that’s how I met my clients.
And I thought Benoni was good to me. It was a quiet neighbourhood, mostly Afrikaans, with no prostitutes on the streets. I could get clients, and I could work in the clubs. I didn’t have to stand on the streets, or deal with rip-off pimps.
A friend of Steve’s saw that I didn’t have a proper home, and that I was just living at the fire station. He suggested that I come to work at his bar.
NgiloNgilo was a nice place in Benoni, an African jazz bar named after an African struggle song; people who were into jazz and poetry went there. It was next to a big funeral parlour company.
Sisi Chuma owned and ran the bar. She was tall and wore Xhosa dreadlocks. She was a woman who talked tough. Her skin was oiled to make it look shiny.
I worked as a waitress there and was given permission to sleep in the storeroom at night, so I left the fire station.
The problem was that I had to be in my room by 10pm since the storeroom was locked overnight. That meant I couldn’t run out and get my drugs when I needed them, and I only had weed to smoke during the week. I started sipping on bottles of alcohol from the storeroom, taking care that none of the bottles got empty so quickly that Sisi Chuma would notice.
That was also the trade-off about Benoni: it was a nice place, but it also wasn’t easy getting drugs there, so I had to take the train to Kempton Park in my off hours.
Sunday was my only off day, so I organised it that on a Saturday night I’d serve at the bar and then find a client to leave with so that it appeared to Sisi Chuma that he was my boyfriend. I couldn’t do this on a regular basis though, because Sisi Chuma would notice.
‘Oh, you have so many boyfriends on the weekends!’ Sisi Chuma would smirk at me, with one front tooth shining brown and grey.
I had three guys who were regular clients at the bar, and who liked the idea that I was selling sex. I saw them on weekends, when I could also meet their friends and make deals. One of the regulars tried to pimp me by acting like my boyfriend – he didn’t know that I already knew how things worked. He’d drop me off at his friend’s place for favours and selling drugs. This was all done quietly, because I still needed to keep things secret from Sisi Chuma.
Although I found that a bit upsetting, things seemed to be going fine. I had a real job working at the bar as well as my clients, so I was getting double pay. I enjoyed free alcohol because guys at the bar would buy me drinks, although I didn’t drink if I was already high on weed.
On Sundays, I could travel to Kempton Park for my drugs and get very high, and I’d still have enough weed to smoke during the week. I picked my drugs according to my needs: there were drugs for weekdays, drugs for boring days, drugs for fun days, drugs for the weekends.
I thought I had balance in my life.
Thirteen
I WORKED AT NGILONGILO UNTIL I got pregnant.
I was twenty years old, and it came as a shock.
I hadn’t used condoms during any of my exploits. Trying to prepare for sex by taking condoms with me to work, giving them to clients or trying to use them in the middle of a session simply didn’t work. When I was with a client, I was too busy trying to earn my money, and the guys were too busy trying to get their groove on. I also never had any contraceptive injections, and we girls didn’t know about the woman’s condom. While the condom was important for preventing infection in the mouth, I rarely used one for vaginal penetration. But this did not occur much anyway since clients preferred other positions.
It was the combination of alcohol and drugs that made the decision, and pregnancy was not on my mind.
So I was surprised by my pregnancy, and it frustrated me.
It interfered with my job security and my living arrangements. I had got used to this routine of mine.
The father of my baby was a client, but a loving one. I thought I maybe saw a relationship developing between us, and he didn’t think I was a prostitute because he didn’t know about my other clients.
When I told the father of my baby about my pregnancy, he ran away and I never saw him again.
Hilmanton was Shona-speaking, and he became attracted to me because I was pregnant. He used the expression, ‘Ukuthandwa kwesisu’ (the symptoms of pregnancy make you attractive to men).
To men like Hilmanton, pregnancy is very beautiful, indicating that a woman is fertile and can have children. What it didn’t mean was that he wanted this child; he didn’t want people to think he had made me pregnant with this baby I was carrying.
‘If you have an abortion, I’ll marry you,’ he tried to convince me.
Hilmanton would pick me up in his nice BMW and drive us to a bar to chat. We had a lot of sex in his car. It was all an adventure for him. He was tall, dark, handsome and very well educated.
And he felt sorry for me.
I knew I was developing feelings for him. I was comfortable with him; he treated me nicely. I thought he was worth it.
We looked everywhere for a clinic to perform the abortion.
Hilmanton wanted to do everything legally so there would be no mess-up. But the clinics refused because I was too far along with the pregnancy.
So Hilmanton left, he disappeared and never came back.
For several months I tried to hide my pregnancy from Sisi Chuma.
One day, she asked me straight out, ‘What are you going to do with the baby? I can’t keep you here like this.’
Since abortion was by now out of the question, Sisi Chuma eventually decided to let me stay and work at the bar until I delivered the baby. She then offered to help me and suggested that I give the baby up for adoption. She arranged for me to go to an organisation in Parktown that provided a shelter for abandoned b
abies or babies being given up for adoption.
It was a nice place. Their house policy was that I had to write a letter to the baby, who would receive it at the age of eighteen, and I did that.
I was angry, hurt and confused, but I decided that with my way of life, I couldn’t keep a baby.
I delivered my baby boy on 14 December 2001, seven days after my twenty-first birthday. I only saw his tiny face for a split second, right after his birth, before he was whisked away.
He was adopted immediately.
I named him Z.
After that, I got my job back with Sisi Chuma, and lived in the bar’s storeroom again for a while. But Sisi Chuma and I weren’t getting along, and I was afraid of meeting my baby’s father at the bar, which would have been very painful for me.
Eventually, I stopped working at NgiloNgilo because everyone there was asking me where my baby was.
I felt the walls were caving in on me.
When I left NgiloNgilo, I was still hurt from having what I had thought was a caring man walk out on me because I couldn’t have an abortion. It had also been very painful trying to get over the fact that I had given up my baby son.
I needed to find myself again. I needed time to heal.
And I needed my own place to stay.
I met someone in a Benoni tavern, a man called Madoda. For R300 a month, his chubby aunt, Sisi Jabu, rented me a back room in their big house, which she ran like a guest house.
Sisi Jabu was a Zulu lady. She would gamble at the street corner, playing cards, smoking and sniffing tobacco with the men folk. She was very kind to me, and I grew very close to her family.
I paid up front for three months of rent and when I first arrived I wasn’t looking for sex work.
Madoda had a crush on me. I was only twenty-one, and he was much older. He took the time to help me fix up my room, putting up black cotton fabric to cover the ceiling. Then we painted the walls orange! I wanted the room to be a dark place where I could smoke my weed and feel safe.
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