Combatting Human Trafficking in South Africa

Human Trafficking

The US State Dept and UN agencies were estimating that around 30,000-100,000 people would be trafficked into South Africa for the 2010 World Cup. This was one of the most shocking discoveries as we researched and prayed into South Africa for our DTS Outreach. Human Trafficking is basically modern-day slavery, people are tricked and trapped into extorting employment with oppressive conditions and unjust wages, if any.

Along with this reality we found that although statistics range considerably, all authorities in this area agree that more people are caught in modern day slavery/human trafficking than at any other time in human history! Further research showed us that much of the trafficking of people into South Africa was for the purposes of sexual slavery.

God began to give us a burden for these faceless and voiceless people, and through prayer convinced us we had some part to play in combatting this during our time in South Africa. As we prayed about this, it was clear much of the battle was in the form of the international demand for prostitution which had been created by the World Cup.

As clearly, there is no reasonable expectation that people won’t travel to attend the world cup and that prostitution is far too wide an issue to address within such a short period. So God began to give a vision to us of revealing the person behind the prostitution to those who attended the World Cup.We hope that by revealing God’s image and his worth in the women involved in prostitution in a form which would be understood by those in the target group of men would be impacting enough to dissuade them from engaging in prostitution.

Originally the plan was to use a presentation or article on the planes which would bring the huge number of visitors to South Africa for the world cup, but after a number of closed doors and the scale of the task, we prayed about it and used some creativity to scale the concept of the project.

We came up with an idea that had been used in the UK of printing beer mats (coasters) which feature an eye catching design which replicates an advertisement for prostitution, and then a short sentence of information about sexual slavery on the back.

Within a week or so we managed to secure full funding for the project through JusticeACTS, a not-for-profit YWAM organisation working in this area, we discovered that there was high demand for coasters from South African Brewery’s and therefore an open door for the materials. We really feel like God opened so many doors for us in this venture, within a few weeks we had created a design, found funding, an affordable printing process, and finally an open door for the materials to be delivered. All this resulted in thousands of beer mats (coasters) being distributed in the FIFA main venues of every stadium city that was hosting a world cup game in South Africa. We were amazed!

We titled the awareness campaign after its UK counter-part “The Truth Isn’t Sexy” Here was the design on the back.

Back of Coaster Story

The Truth Isnt Sexy - FIFA 2010 World Cup Human Trafficking Awareness Campaign

Liam and Rachel are working as missionaries/development strategists/followers of Jesus amongst the Xhosa people in Masiphuemele, South Africa. Click here to help us by praying with us, follow us on our blog or you can sign up to receive our email updates. You can communicate our story to your local Church or housegroup and we would also hugely appreciate anyone prayerfully considering financially supporting the work we do in South Africa on a regular basis, you can find more about that here.