Selling Her Body To Survive

A brother reveals his heartbreaking decision to prostitute his sister to provide for their, and their families’, basic living needs.

- Nomzamo Ngcobo

GROWING up, her dream was to become one of the best doctors in the Eastern Cape.

Financial constraints, however, took her down a very different path and she ended up falling into the prostitution trap.

She assures us that if she or her brother could find another job, she would stop selling her body today.

We meet Pearl* (24) and her brother, Brian* (41), in their one-room shack in Zakhele informal settlement outside Rustenburg in the North West.

The siblings welcome us inside and offer us a wooden chair by the door to sit on. Brian and Pearl perch on a neatly covered single bed.

The temperature inside the room is sweltering, as the shack does not have any windows.

It contains the basics: a bed and a paraffin stove for cooking.

“I go out to prostitute at night, while my brother sleeps,” Pearl tells us. “In the morning, I come back with food and he wakes up to cook, then it’s my turn to sleep. We spend about R150 on paraffin each month.”

Brian tells us how they ended up in this desperate situation.

He came to Rustenburg from Mqanduli in the Eastern Cape to work at a mine eight years ago. With his job secure, his younger sister joined him to search for work as well.