ANC MP proposes legalising prostitution. The feelgood factor?

With ANC president Jacob Zuma confirming that the World Cup 2010 will go ahead despite the current energy crisis, I was delighted to read in the Sowetan that an ANC MP is proposing that sex workers be legalised.

Please read the article; it’s short, but it’s a classic. For example, MP George Lekgetho told Parliament:

“It is one of the things that would make it [the tournament] a success because we hear of many rapes, because people don’t have access to them [women].”

and (even better):

“If sex work is legalised, people would not do things in the dark.”

I was on the floor.

It’s bad enough for some of these ladies to have to take your money; now they’re being told that you lot may want to keep the lights on? FFS, your missus or girlfriends may have to do the deed with mental pictures of you etched in their minds, but surely these ladies have suffered enough.

Mind you, many of you have been writing in to complain that your better half has threatened to give you your marching orders unless you get in touch with your “feminine side”. Lord knows, most of you have tried, but these women can’t seem to understand that your feminine side usually lives a long way from your spouse (for obvious reasons). You daren’t phone — what with the Cape spying scandal — and the price of petrol and gridlocks at traffic lights are making it an exercise in futility.

Anyhow, never fear, with Eskom chances are we’ll all be doing everything in the dark regardless. That’s where the feelgood factor comes in — if you can’t feel good in the dark, you’re going to be poesing all over your furniture for the whole of February.

I shouldn’t complain, really. I plan to be just outside the door to the ladies’ changeroom at our gym every night.

As soon as those lights go out, I’m in there like a whippet and apologising: “I beg your pardon, madam … teddibly sorry, young lady …” Make sure you wait until your eyes adjust to the dark or you won’t be able to make out the basic shapes; my form, I’ll be cornered by the goalie from the hockey team just as the lights go on … but I digress,

Why shouldn’t prostitution be legalised for the World Cup and even beyond?

Not every tourist is interested in visiting our game reserves or the zoo.

As Lekgetho rightly pointed out, it would be a source of taxable income and provide a safer environment for its practitioners. Rather they be regulated and, to a degree, protected than walking the streets and running any number of risks.

The income earned by single mothers working in this trade feeds many families — dependents who are currently at risk of losing their breadwinners to rape and murder.

As opposed to prostitutes coming out on to our streets, regulations could take them out of harm’s way and into protected areas.

Don’t fool yourself for a minute into thinking that by criminalising sex workers you reduce the numbers or even remove them from society. Quite the contrary; it’s a thriving industry and while some of its workers are well paid and looked after, the majority are not.

Another benefit is that it would enable the police to monitor much of the narcotics traded alongside this industry, and ensure that this is localised as opposed to spread out all over our cities. By making certain specific areas legitimate for prostitution, you exclude the need for taking to the streets in search of business — clients will have to go to the demarcated areas.

Whether we like it or not, prostitution is here to stay. By decriminalising it there are many benefits to the people who ply this trade as well as those who would like to see it brought under control.

Right now it’s anything goes.

Of course, with the World Cup not too far away, we can encourage tourists to buy maps with those demarcated areas indicated, along with bicycles and torches. As soon as the power goes out during a game, they can peddle en masse to our no-light district (we can’t use red globes because there’s no power to light them up).

If they don’t have a bicycle, it’s voorsprong, draf en tegniek.

* I would like to wish the family of the late Sheldon Cohen a long life and that you know no further suffering. This wonderful man, with whom I was at school many years ago, was another senseless victim of the terrible crime that haunts all South Africans.