Breaking Up Brawling Sailors

The other night at one of the dockside clubs in Cape Town, a dozen Chinese seamen stood poised to brawl with 8 Filipino sailors.

The trouble started by the pay phones. A Filipino guy bumped into a Chinese who was busy talking to his family on the phone. The Filipino failed to apologize and the Chinese shoved him in return. They got in each other's faces, growling in their respective tongues. Then the Chinese went back to the phone while the Filipino stomped off.

Soon after, the Chinese guy complained to his shipmates who immediately demanded redress from the Filipinos. The atmosphere at the club changed. No more good times, no more touchy-feely with the ladies, no more happy-go-lucky jacks. The crews flexed their sinewy muscles, ready for fisticuffs. The women stood helpless as their johns abandoned them to stand by their mates. Their honor was on the line.

Such displays of testosterone and rigor are regular features of dockside interaction. Insobriety, jingoism, and competition over females put the sailors on edge with each other. Usually nothing happens, but if the macho tension becomes too great, bedlam can ensue.

A few months ago, a group of Vietnamese sailors stabbed a Chinese seamen to death in one of the clubs. A Vietnamese guy had a drunken dispute with the Chinese over a prostitute. When the Chinese left and stumbled over to another club, the Vietnamese sailor rounded up his mates and followed him. There they surround him while one of the gang finished him off with a single stab.

When I was in Durban last year, Korean and Indonesian sailors cracked each other's skulls with pool cues. Two women—unhappy with the fees they had negotiated with the Koreans—tried to see if they do better with the Indonesians. A big NO-NO. When the Koreans saw the women with the other guys, they waylaid them. Two had to go to the hospital. And the women left empty-handed.

So what is the club owner to do? Bouncers typically get between the opponents, establish their dominance, and send one of the parties outside. In this situation by the phone, the Chinese were escorted outside.

But the owner called the Chinese guy back inside and insisted the Filipino sailor apologize to him. The Chinese accepted with a handshake and joined his mates outside. But they refused to accept it. So the owner sent out two 6-packs of beer that mollified them. Cops and security guards kept an eye on their public drinking—shrugging off the illegality—but the problem was defused.

The next night, the same group of Chinese and Filipinos were at the clubs again, sitting right across from each other. But they carried on as if nothing had happened. Such is the power of alcohol-based conflict-resolution strategies by savvy club owners.

Sex Drugs Booze: Prostitutes' Chemical Coping

The Cape Times (16 April 2007)—paraphrasing a report on streetwalkers in Cape Town, Durban, and Jo'burg—says that "reducing the high levels of anxiety and fear normally associated with sex work is one of the reasons why sex workers use drugs."

Charles Parry, a director of the Alcohol & Drug Abuse Research Unit and co-author of the report, says that violence and fear are key for understanding chemical abuse. He also states that such alcohol and drug use inhibits safe sexual practices, enhancing the likelihood of HIV-transmission between clients and sex workers.

At seamen's nightclubs, all of the prostitutes drink and many also take drugs. The African women in Durban tend to go for dagga (marijuana) while the coloureds and whites of Cape Town may also add rock, tik, ecstacy, or Mandrax to the mix.

But they use chemicals to cope for quite different problems than streetwalkers. Since the women solicit in nightclubs, protected by bouncers, they are relatively free of client violence. When they go to a hotel or their apartment for sex, they are also in spaces that they have more control over than the foreign seafaring clients. Most dockside women report that, if they have ever been raped, molested, or abused, it has almost always been at the hands of relatives or local men. Unlike sailors, locals know what they can get away with.

Dockside women do not experience the same "anxiety" that streetwalkers do because they are not as exposed to negative legal attention (abusive cops), financial predators (pimps), or anonymous men (local johns). This is because police don't bother coming into the clubs, all the women are independent operators (no pimps), and everyone knows which ships the sailors belong to in case they need to complain.

The anxiety they feel is related to more mundane social and psychological stresses: shame, depression, boredom, financial worries, and low self-esteem. Many felt these anxieties before working in the clubs—due to childhood abuse, dysfunctional family lives, and low educational achievement—but the stigma of sex work exacerbates these feelings.

Almost everyone woman I've spoken to says "you can't do this work without drinking. It's not nice to go with a different man every night. It makes us sick to our stomachs. Drinking is the only way to deal with it." Some say that they must drink to "get wet" for intercourse, otherwise they will think too much about their "degrading" circumstances and remain "dry." Alcohol takes the edge off their shame and battered self-worth, they say.

But the women take drugs and alcohol for recreational purposes as well. As we know, plenty of people who are not involved in sex work drink and take drugs because they find it enjoyable. Most dockside women feel the same. Many enthusiastically report that "we LOVE alcohol!" Thus, there is an ambivalence as to whether these chemicals answer a need (which makes them seem helpless and less culpable for their actions) or a want (which highlights their sense of agency).

Either way, alcohol and drugs are a big part of life for dockside prostitutes. Few survive the business without struggling with addiction issues, health problems, or the consequences of drunk/high behavior (STIs or pregnancy due to unsafe sex).