INLSA
This women, Svetlana(not her real name) has been a trafficking viticm for several years. Photio: Matthew Jordaan
Zara Nicholson
“You look good, your body is tough, you make good money,” her Russian agent told her as he met her at the airport in Switzerland. Svetlana (not her real name) did not know what he meant as she had come from Eastern Europe to work, not knowing what she would have to do.
All her father’s girlfriend had said was: “You can go overseas, there are lots of girls, they count a lot of money.”
Svetlana comes from a country known to be one of the main destinations and sources of human trafficking victims.
The exact locations of her experiences have not been mentioned for her safety.
At 20, she had just completed a three-year course but, like many young people in her country, struggled to find work. She went on to study cosmetology, planning to open a beautician business before taking out a loan to start the venture.
Svetlana fidgets briefly: “I wanted to make nice hair, do weddings and be something good.” However her flatmate stole the money and she could not repay the bank.
“I had no money and the bank security said the police would lock me up. I told them if they let me go out of the country, I will get the money. My father’s girlfriend told me I can go work overseas where these girls just count money. My father didn’t know what the girls had to do, he just said ‘Go make f***ing good money’.” He encouraged her to go to Switzerland.
When she arrived, her agent took her to a house. “I saw immediately it’s a strip club and they took me to my room in the attic. I heard another woman speak Russian outside my room and I started crying when I heard what she said. I wasn’t in the right place, this is not me. They took my passport and I couldn’t escape. This girl came to me and told me: ‘It’s nice, you be nice and smile and just drink with the guys’.”
She interrupts her story to say that she had never drunk alcohol before.
“The girl took me to the boss, he was Italian. They opened Champagne for the ‘new girl’ and I asked for water. Everyone laughed at me, but I said I don’t drink. One lady laughed, ‘Don’t tell me you’re a virgin’, and I said ‘So what if I am?’ They all asked me what I’m doing there and the boss, he was angry because the agent lied to him about who I was and what I could do.”
The next night she drank three bottles of Champagne and kept men company, talking.
“After one glass I felt f***ed up. The next day I just drank again because that was my work and talk to men… they said I would get $15 000 each month. I had to stay eight months and I would pay back the bank and leave,” she said.
Svetlana realised she was not getting all her money, as some would go to the boss. She was told to strip if she wanted to make more.
Each month, Svetlana and the other girls were rotated between clubs and cities to keep clients happy. “But my Italian boss came one day and told the girls he went bankrupt, he has no money for us. We can go now, we must go wherever we want,” Svetlana said.
Still in Switzerland, she moved to a new club where her boss was known as “Santa Claus”.
“It was a drugs place and they called him that because it was like Christmas for men coming to his place.”
At this club, Svetlana had her first experience of men asking her to perform explicit sexual acts. After eight months in Switzerland, her passport was handed back to her and she went home, an alcoholic. “I drank every day and my father didn’t like it. He was angry and said ‘Go back to Switzerland, they f***ed you up’. I was angry because my father didn’t realise what I had to do, he told me I was lying,” she said.
After four months she went to an island in the eastern Mediterranean. “I had to make more money for the bank because of all the interest. I went to this new place and I find it not so bad, not so good. I already forgot who I was. This boss was better, he said don’t do drugs and alcohol,” she said.
Svetlana stayed in the Mediterranean for six months. “I made $36 000 and I go back to my country, happy.” Then a school friend who heard what she had been doing abroad asked her to go with him to the Middle East. “He told me it’s good money and I already did this before. But when I got there he said they want to sell my kidney. They gave me some medication and this lady was taking my blood. It was like I was watching myself from the outside. I was leaning against the car and this man asked me if I knew what I was doing there. I just shook my head.”
When she woke up she was at the Russian Embassy, and security police took her home on a chartered flight.
Back home, the security police tapped her phone and recorded her friend’s calls to her. Three days later they arrested her friend. Svetlana found out he was involved in trafficking girls and had close to 40 victims. Some had committed suicide and others are still missing. The friend was recently convicted.
During his trial, Svetlana was kept in witness protection but was threatened by a man asking her to change her testimony when she went home.
“I told the policeman I don’t feel safe and I need to get out of my country. I found an agency on the internet and this man said he would find work for me in Cape Town. He told me to go for a medical exam and a nurse stamped my form and said I was clear. I paid her R100 and just like that I got my visa and came to South Africa.”
l In the second part of our Human Trafficking series tomorrow, Svetlana tells us about her experiences in the Cape Town sex industry.
zara.nicholson@inl.co.za
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