Elevate HER: From homeless sex worker at 12 to helping others in need
Twenty-six-year-old Sinovuyo Dlamini* from Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, is a dynamic woman whose confidence and shyness reflect her remarkable journey.
Her dual personality offers a glimpse into the challenges she’s overcome to develop such traits.
Dlamini is homeless and became a sex worker at the cusp of teenagehood at just 12 years old.
Her story is one of peril and horror but her delivery of these traumatic events of her life to IOL are as if she could be talking about the weather — flat and devoid of emotion.
One can assume that this is a protective mechanism developed to cope with the harsh realities brought onto her.
However, Dlamini seems to have weathered this horrific season of her life and emerged hopeful and driven.
She described her childhood experience as one of loneliness. She told IOL that she felt different and alienated from her peers because she was heavier than them.
“I was a bigger size than the other kids. This set me apart and sowed the seeds for me getting viciously bullied,” Dlamini said.
She had a friend who was also relatively bigger in comparison to her peers. The two girls started to smoke cannabis because they had heard that it can cause weight loss.
One day, she recalled, they did not have the cash to buy cannabis and they came across a woman who asked them to go buy khat (an amphetamine which has similar effects to cocaine and tik) for her in exchange for money.
“She said if we wanted weed, we should try khat because it had familiar effects. As a adult, we trusted her and the power balance was skewed in her favour. From that day, we were hooked.”
Things quickly deteriorated as the drug took its hold on Dlamini. Even her family noticed that something was amiss.
In no time, she escalated to stealing items from the house to sell in order to fund the dangerous habit. Dlamini went beyond the family lines and started to steal from the community. She became known as the rebellious and thieving ‘druggie’ child.
Her actions eventually caught up with her when the community rallied and descended on her in an act of mob justice.
Dlamini claimed that she was slapped around by angry residents but was rescued by the police who happened to be nearby. After this incident, she left her family, home and all that she knew to go live on the streets of Durban.
With a mind altered by substance abuse and childhood naïveté, Dlamini had no idea how to survive the cut-throat world of street living.
“My first day of being homeless was terrifying. I got here without knowing a single soul. I begged for money and food from passers-by but quickly saw that it would not be enough to sustain me. So, I decided to turn to sex work.”
Dlamini, who is sensitive and empathetic, was brief in talking about this traumatic chapter of her life.
This is understandable as under South African law, this constitutes statutory rape, which is any sexual contact between an adult and a minor, regardless of consent.
However, she mentioned that the men who committed the acts were under the impression that she was an adult.
While in the streets, she met a 20-year-old man who ‘took her under his wing’ and supplied her with food and drugs. She quit sex work to be with him.
Dlamini was with him until she was 17. “He found other girls and I got fed up and left,” she said. However, she ended up being with another man who “took care of her”.
She spots numerous scars on her body that she got on the unforgiving streets of the City. She recounted how once she was hit by a car and could not even go to the hospital but had to sit with the pain.
Additionally, she was attacked by a stranger in the night who attempted to rape her. She said he strangled her for around 15 minutes but she fought for her life and other people stepped in to help, and the perpetrator ran off.
In 2020, things took a turn for her as the government rounded up the homeless during the Covid-19 lockdowns.
Dlamini said it was pandemonium as hundreds of people suddenly had to do without drugs and went into withdrawal. She experienced and witnessed others throwing up, losing control of their bowels and shaking violently.
This slowly went away when the government started distributing methadone, an opioid medicine that is used in the treatment of heroin and other opioid dependencies, and for pain relief from some conditions.
She saw that she finally had the opportunity to change her life and she seized it.
Dlamini said: “As I started taking methadone, I decided to turn my life around. I began to feel like my long lost self again. I could eat, go about my day and feel like a normal person.”
She is still on the drug but a lower dose as she wants to tapper off completely. In an effort to give back to other homeless people, she volunteered at the Bell Haven Harm Reduction Centre.
“People on the streets are human too. But they are not treated as such. They need guidance and non-judgemental eyes who can show them the way because that sort of life that leave one feel ashamed and afraid to seek help.
“There also needs to be an understanding that homeless people come from all walks of life. Some are educated but could not find work. Some do drugs, some do not. The reality is fair more complex than what meets the eye,” she added.
IOL has embarked on a campaign called Elevate Her to highlight the plight of homeless women of South Africa. IOL is also collecting items for dignity packs to be distributed across the country. To get involved, email info@iol.co.za
*Not her real name. Changed for privacy.
xolile.mtembu@iol.co.za
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