From despair to hope: a Chatsworth HIV-positive sex worker's journey to rehabilitation

A HIV-positive sex worker from Chatsworth shared her harrowing eight-year journey of violence, exploitation and drug addiction after being deceived with false job promises.

- YOSHINI PERUMAL

Now, with help from the Anti Drug Forum (ADF), she sees a path to rehabilitation and reuniting with her children, while experts highlight the systemic issues trapping vulnerable women in cycles of prostitution and addiction.

Despite being shot four times in Havenside after refusing to have unprotected sex and becoming hooked on drugs to numb her reality of selling her body for money, the 46-year-old mother of four said she lived in hope of turning her life around.

The woman said she was forced into prostitution after a man who promised her a job at RK Khan Hospital as a cleaner in 2018 went back on his word.

She said she found out that she was HIV positive shortly after she began working in Chatsworth, and then got hooked on drugs, which had kept her in the vicious cycle of prostitution.

The woman claimed her clients were mainly married Indian men who demanded unprotected sex. She said she did not reveal her status to any of her clients for the fear of losing them.

She said in the last two years, it had been difficult to make money because of the influx of young Indian girls working in the area, mostly at night.

"In 2018, I came to Chatsworth from Umzinto, where I worked as a domestic worker. With the little money I had, I thought I would get a cleaning job at the hospital. I left my four children behind. I thought I would be able to earn enough to give my children a good education because I never went to school and know how hard it is to get a job.

"I was living in the house in Westcliff where the man had also housed other women he had promised jobs to.

"A girl there told me she earned a living through prostitution in Croftdene. At the time, I thought I could make enough money to go back home and buy some items for my family. But eight years later, I am still here," she added.