'Mandela would have supported us': South African feminists fight to abolish the sex trade

South Africa is one of the many countries in the global south that is host to a vibrant "sex workers' rights" movement, calling for full decriminalisation of the sex trade.

But in Cape Town at least, this popular narrative is being increasingly challenged by survivors of prostitution, feminist abolitionists and human rights activists, under the banner of Embrace Dignity, an NGO founded by former health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge

A former ANC activist, Madlala-Routledge has devoted much of her life to ensuring women get their full rights in South Africa. A member of Parliament from 1994 to 2009, and Chair of the ANC Parliamentary caucus, on leaving politics she wanted to put her experience To good use.

In 2009 Madlala-Routledge was invited to NYC to give a presentation to NoVo, a women's human-rights organisation, on the topic of trafficking and prostitution in South Africa. The Fifa World Cup was due to be held the following year, and the pro-prostitution pressure organisation Sex Worker Advocacy Taskforce (Sweat) had called on the government to speed up the decriminalisation of prostitution, claiming that it would solve the problems inherent to the sex trade, and offer protection for those involved.

"Being a Quaker and a feminist I should have naturally have been arguing for the abolition of the sex trade," says Nozizwe when we meet in the Embrace Dignity offices in Woodstock, Cape Town, "but I had swallowed the line about women having control of their bodies [and that] prostitution is the oldest profession."

Madlala-Routledge had already begun to worry that the World Cup would provide an ideal opportunity for criminal gangs to traffic women into and around the country to meet the demand of the thousands of male spectators and participants.

"Almost everybody else was talking about how fantastic this opportunity was for South Africa," says Madlala-Routledge, "but I knew it meant bad news for women and girls."

In conducting her research for NoVo, Madlala-Routledge discovered that the loudest voices were calling to decriminalise not just the women and men in prostitution, but also the pimps, brothel owner and sex buyers.

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