Managing Vice

Prostitutes solicit at dockside nightclubs in Cape Town and Durban to make money for themselves. They care very little about the financial health of the club owners. The see the clubs as a business pick-up joint. And if they had it their way, they'd whisk away the guys as soon as possible and take them out for business.

The owners need women at their clubs, otherwise the sailors won't come. But they also need them to inspire the seamen to spend money on alcohol before going off for sex. Otherwise the club won't survive.

So there is a delicate balance of interests between the club owners & prostitutes. The owners put up the money for the joint, pay the levies, employ the staff, and so on. And their outlay provides a space for the women to solicit in relative safety and comfort. To cover these expenses and make a profit, they need the sailors to buy lots of alcohol. That's how they make their money. (The women pay very little money themselves, letting the seamen buy them drinks, cigarettes and food.)

The sugar girls know that their presence is all-important to the profitability of the club. Without them, sailors wouldn't bother to come. And the club owner wouldn't have a business. Thus they feel entitled to the bulk of the seamen's cash. While they like drinking and dancing with the guys at the clubs, they don't want them to blow all of their money there. They want them to save it for sex afterwards. So they try to leave with the guys as soon as possible, depriving the club of alcohol sales, but protecting their own earnings.

To arbitrate these competing needs and desires, the club owners have instituted a simple rule: if a prostitute leaves the club before 2 A.M., she must pay a fine of 100 rands ($14). This is called a "bar fee." It ensures 2 things. That bored women remain at the club (even if it is dead) so that the club retains a vibey atmosphere if any sailors might pop in. And—for women who leave with clients before 2 A.M.—the fee represents the money that the sailor would have spent on alcohol had the prostitute not taken him early for sex.

In this way, the owner doesn't allow the women to abuse his hospitality by coming and going as they please. For the privilege of soliciting at the club, the ladies must hang around even if there is no action and they must pay a fee if they take a sailor too early. After 2 A.M. though, they're free.

The women grumble about the rule, but they understand it. Heck, they even enforce it: if a woman sneaks off before 2 A.M. without paying the fee, her rivals at the club will make sure the owner finds out and fines her!

Waiting for the Gush of Seamen

When I get downtown, the dockside clubs are totally empty. No sailors anywhere. Everything else is in place—willing women, cross-armed bouncers, bored barmaids, earphoned DJs, sleepy cabbies—but their presence lacks meaning without the seamen. They are the source of their livelihoods. Needless to say, everyone feels slightly agitated.

The women lounge around in the booths and watch Animal Planet on the big screen TV. The "Crocodile Hunter" is busy taunting spitting cobras into squirting venom in his eyes. He relishes every jet of poison deflected off his glasses. Meanwhile, the club girls squirm as they watch slow-mo close-ups of snakes shooting liquid death from their hissing fangs. For the moment, it relieves the boredom, but it doesn't shake their deeper financial anxieties.

Eventually, a couple of Taiwanese sailors walk in. Three women race to them. The men sit down and enjoy the attention: their laps are never empty. And they're generous enough, buying beers for themselves and the ladies.

But after awhile, the women realize that one of them has to go. Three ladies with two sailors: not gonna work. Despite the promiscuous atmosphere at the club, the women are profoundly monogamous in their sexual negotiations: they insist that everyone pairs off. No three-somes allowed. (No one wants to split the fees.)

While the men crawl deeper into insobriety, the women follow close behind. But they also become aggressive with each other. Then it happens. Two of the girls go at each other. Fists fly toward faces, hands grab for hair, palms hurtle toward cheeks, fingernails claw at flesh, feet kick at shins, tongues hurl abuse, and lips spit at eyeballs. Their smacks reverberate across the room above the noise of the music as the two stumble, struggle, curse, and thrash about.

The bouncers watch with mild interest—quite unperturbed—then reluctantly break it up. But like on Jerry Springer, the bouncers don't separate them so far that they can't still smack each other every now and then.

The three girls—who live together!—forget about their quarry as they are escorted outside. They yell endless accusations and insults at each other while a small crowd of women gather around them (happy for the distraction). They eventually share a cab home and continue the drunken dispute there. The Taiwanese, meanwhile, just laugh, imbibe a few more beers, and accept the attentions of other ladies.

Cape Town's dockside clubs are prone to seasonal fluctuations. But usually there's at least a couple dozen sailors to go around. Tonight, virtually NO ONE came. Instead, what came out were the women's expressions of boredom, anxiety, and frustration at a totally wasted evening of work.

What are these girls DOING?!

A couple of young white guys from Jo'burg wander into a Cape Town seamen's clubs. As they sit down, two sugar girls immediately attend to them. The guys look pleased: they've only walked in and already they're getting attention! Schweet!

They drink and talk with the women for awhile. Late, around 4am, I chat with the guys. They look relieved to see another white face. They are surrounded by Filipino sailors. It seems strange to them. They can't quite figure out what's going on.

After we greet, they don't want to let me go. They tell me they are pilots—in town for an evening—staying at a nice Waterfront hotel. I tell them I'm a student writing a book about dockside nightlife. One of the women proudly concurs, "Ja, Henry's writing a book about us!"

After some more chat—and a few more drinks on their part—one of the guys leans toward me and asks, "Dude, what are these girls?!"

"What do you mean?" I ask.

He looks around, making sure the two women who are hanging on them can't hear him: "What are these girls doing?

"Oh!" I smile. "They're soliciting."

The two guys look at each other in a mixture of amazement, horror, and fascination, then exclaim in unison, "Dude, they're prostitutes!"

I'm still smiling. "Indeed."

They look at each other, me, the women, then each other. Stunned. One of them pipes up, "I knew it. I knew they were prossies." The other one cuts in, "No wonder they're so friendly. Shit!"

It takes 'em a few minutes to overcome their astonishment, but then they ask me where they can find clubs with "normal" girls. I tell them about the bars on Long Street, "but it's late. It's doubtful you'll find much happening there at this time of night." It's a week night too.

So the guys—looking more than a little drunk now—shrug and say, "Fuck it." They take a look at the ladies sitting with them—also piss drunk—and say, "Hell, might as well stay here." They toast the decision and carry on drinking with the women.

The Nocturnal Dockside Scene

In downtown Cape Town & Durban there exist nightclubs devoted solely to the pleasure of seamen.

They cater to seafarers by ensuring their safety, by enticing "working girls" to solicit from the club (to "entertain" the seamen, as the owners like to say), and by barring local men who might try to interfere with the sailors' good times. From the outside, these clubs look like seedy dives. (It's the same inside.) But the nautical paraphernalia strewn about the entrance lets you know that this joint is for mariners. Somehow, the "straight" crowds that dominate Long Street in Cape Town and Florida Road in Durban know that these clubs are not for them. They stay away from this shadowland.

The club scene for seafarers dates to the 1970s when the containerization of cargo and the apartheid government's Group Areas Act destroyed the dockside communities that had serviced the passing seamen for generations. At The Point in Durban and the District One docklands (Waterkant area) and District Six in Cape Town, numerous "suikerhuisies" (Afrikaans sugar houses, ie. brothels) offered carnal delights to the transient waifs.

Once the brothels passed out, Greek entrepreneurs established clubs in the downtown areas. They struck a bargain with the local sex workers: as long as they encouraged the men to buy alcohol at the clubs for a few hours, they were free to solicit them for post-club sexual contracts.

It's a pretty fair deal. And it's been relatively stable for 30-odd years. The club owner provides a festive atmosphere for the sailors by having sexually available women around; this encourages them to party and buy drinks at the clubs. The owner is therefore able to secure his livelihood from these alcohol sales. The presence of women are central to that process. As one club manager said, "A club without chicks is dead."

So the owners have to do right by the ladies. The main thing they do is give them the right to solicit in relative safety and anonymity. Many women find this an attractive alternative to the exposure of streetwalking and the boredom of brothel work. They are also able to elude legal prosecution because solicitation techniques are indistinguishable from activities at "straight" clubs (dancing, touching, drinking, talking, singing). Thus, very few women have had any problems with the police in the last few years. (During apartheid it was another matter; but more on that later.)

But let there be no doubt: all of the women's efforts at the clubs are part of a highly competitive and complex solicitation strategy. They do not come to the clubs to "party," though it is a handy explanation if the cops confront them. They come to work. What looks like fun-n-games to outsiders is really just an attempt to make a living. No more, no less.

There are three major points you need to understand about dockside prostitution:

1. solicitation techniques are socially complex
   
2. sugar girls' success rests on skills that are quite different from those needed in other sex sectors
   
3. the needs and constraints of of foreign, transient seamen determines the logic and structure of this prostitution niche