Cape Town - Cape Town prostitutes will take on the police in the Cape High Court this week when they seek an interdict to stop what they claim are unlawful arrests.

The application, to be heard on Thursday, will be argued for advocacy group SWEAT by a high-powered legal team headed by senior counsel Wim Trengove.

Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce director Eric Harper said in a statement on Tuesday that the organisation was asking the court to rule that the police could not arrest prostitutes for "ulterior purposes".

The prostitutes with whom SWEAT worked were mainly outdoor sex workers, who were frequently arrested by the SA Police Services and the city police, some more than once a week.

"Notwithstanding this, the overwhelming majority of the sex workers who are arrested are never prosecuted," Harper said.
"The sex workers are simply arrested, held overnight or for the weekend in police cells and then sometimes held for a few hours in the magistrate's holding cells before being released."

Reasons given for the arrests included a wide range of offences, many of which referred to non-existent legal provisions or inapplicable laws, among them the "absurd" claim that the workers were loitering.

"The police do not arrest sex workers with the intention to have them prosecuted," Harper said.

"The purpose for the arrests is the harassment and punishment of the sex workers." This constituted a deprivation of the liberty and security of prostitutes, he said. 

 SAPA