Human Trafficking in South Africa: Statistics, Challenges, and Efforts

Dec 11, 2025 0

Human trafficking remains a significant global issue, and South Africa is not exempt. It is a source, transit, and destination country for human trafficking, impacting vulnerable individuals, including children, women, and men, who are exploited for forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Understanding Human Trafficking

Human trafficking involves taking control of people through duplicity or force for exploitation or economic gain. It includes the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons by means of threat, force, coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power, or exploitation of vulnerability for the purpose of exploitation.

Exploitation includes sexual exploitation, forced labor, slavery, servitude, or the removal of organs. A "child" is defined as any person under eighteen years of age.

Cause of increase in human trafficking in South Africa

Statistics and Scope of the Problem

The absence of reliable statistics makes it challenging to understand the true extent of human trafficking in South Africa. Claims by anti-trafficking campaigners and NGOs, such as the assertion that 30,000 children are trafficked into the country annually for the sex trade, have been discredited as exaggerated and unsubstantiated.

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The problem is further compounded by the absence of an official database on human trafficking. There are also no crime codes in the police service which capture the complexities of each reported incident. Associated human trafficking offences are still subsumed into crimes such rape, sexual assault, kidnapping, abduction and domestic violence.

Notwithstanding the lack of reliable numbers, the problem is prevalent in South Africa. The number of cases being reported suggests it is on the increase. The situation may in fact be far more chronic and severe than we know.

Regional Differences

There are striking regional differences in the age and gender of trafficking victims:

More women than men are trafficked in Africa.
Boys make up the majority of children trafficked in North Africa, primarily for begging.
Girls tend to be trafficked mostly for domestic labor (notably in West Africa).
More than 50 percent of trafficking victims in sub-Saharan Africa are children (mostly in West Africa).
Among detected victims in Africa, there are more males trafficked until the age of 18, at which point the ratio is reversed.

Victim Detection by Region

Many aspects of trafficking in Africa are misunderstood:

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99% of victims detected in West Africa are trafficked within their own country or region
83% in North Africa
90% in East Africa
62% in Southern Africa
17% of victims detected in North Africa originate in West Africa
7% of victims detected in East Africa originate in West Africa
31% of victims detected in Southern Africa originate in East Africa

Vulnerable Groups

Traffickers target the most vulnerable people, including those in transit, such as economic migrants and forcibly displaced persons. There are currently 12 countries in Africa experiencing armed conflict. These conflicts have displaced 25 million people, who are particularly vulnerable to trafficking.

Most African victims are trafficked into forced labor, often in fields such as agriculture, domestic service, and manufacturing.

Forms of Exploitation

Human trafficking in South Africa manifests in several forms of exploitation:

Commercial Sexual Exploitation: South African girls and women from other African countries are often trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation, sometimes extending to Europe.
Forced Labor: Boys are used for street vending, food service, and agriculture. Young men from neighboring countries like Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi are trafficked for farm work.
Domestic Servitude: Women and girls are trafficked for domestic servitude.
Organ Harvesting: South Africa has been a place for organ harvesting due to the exchange rate between South African currency and United States dollars allows recipients a maximum payout.

Government Efforts and Challenges

The Government of South Africa does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so. South Africa was upgraded to Tier 2 due to increasing prosecutions of traffickers, identifying and referring more trafficking victims to protection services, and increasing the number of shelters available to assist trafficking victims.

Government officials increased screening for trafficking indicators among vulnerable populations and enhanced cooperation with civil society organizations on the identification of victims. The government added three additional agencies to its National Inter-ministerial Committee for Trafficking in Persons (NICTIP) to strengthen anti-trafficking efforts.

Key Areas of Improvement

Despite these efforts, challenges remain:

Coordination: Agencies responsible for identifying, referring, and certifying trafficking victims lack coordination.
Knowledge Gaps: Knowledge gaps in understanding human trafficking and referral SOPs likely hindered overall protection efforts.
Victim Services: Victim services remained insufficient, and delays in granting victims official status resulted in some victims being unable to access timely emergency shelter and services.
Law Enforcement Capacity: Law enforcement continued to lack the necessary capacity and training to effectively identify and refer trafficking victims to care.
Corruption: Reports of low-level official corruption and complicity in trafficking crimes persisted, hindering overall anti-trafficking efforts.

Recommendations for Improvement

To combat human trafficking more effectively, the following actions are recommended:

Increase efforts to investigate and prosecute trafficking crimes, and seek adequate penalties for convicted traffickers, including complicit officials, which should involve significant prison terms.
Proactively identify trafficking victims by screening for trafficking indicators during law enforcement operations and labor inspections, and among vulnerable populations, including migrant workers, individuals in commercial sex, refugees and asylum seekers, and Cuban government-affiliated medical workers, and systematically refer trafficking victims to care.
Promulgate and implement the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) immigration provisions in Chapters 3 and 7 of PACOTIP, including Sections 15, 16, and 31(2)(b)(ii) to ensure the issuance of appropriate immigration status and identification documents for trafficking victims.
Significantly increase resources and training for front-line responders, including the South African Police Service (SAPS) and Department of Social Development (DSD) officials, to effectively use victim identification and referral SOPs to identify trafficking victims, distinguish trafficking in persons from other crimes, refer victims to protection services, and apply trauma-informed interviewing techniques.
Ensure victims are not inappropriately penalized solely for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked.
Increase collaboration between law enforcement and provincial DSDs in the victim identification process and streamline the procedure to issue letters of recognition.
Formalize a confidential reporting mechanism for civil society and trafficking victims to safely report allegations of official corruption and complicity in trafficking crimes directly to the government for vigorous investigation.
Implement policies to remove the requirement for victims to participate in investigations and prosecutions to be formally identified and receive trafficking victim status.
Accredit or establish additional shelters to accommodate the needs of male, LGBTQI+, and child trafficking victims.
Implement and consistently enforce strong regulations and oversight of labor recruitment companies, including by holding fraudulent labor recruiters criminally accountable.
Increase outreach and awareness efforts to vulnerable populations, especially for those engaging in commercial sex, in rural and agricultural communities, and foreign migrants.
Ensure all South African peacekeepers receive mandatory pre-departure anti-trafficking training; in collaboration with the UN, investigate all allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse involving South African peacekeepers and hold accountable those complicit.

Legislative and Law Enforcement Efforts

The government increased anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts. PACOTIP criminalized sex trafficking and labor trafficking and prescribed penalties of up to life in prison, a fine of up to 100 million South African rand ($5.9 million), or both. The penalties were sufficiently stringent and, with respect to sex trafficking, commensurate with those for other grave crimes, such as rape.

The Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI, or Hawks), a division of SAPS, investigated 156 trafficking cases, â compared with investigating 29 cases in the previous reporting period. The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) reported prosecuting 123 suspects (28 for sex trafficking, 13 for forced labor, and 82 for unspecified trafficking) and continued the prosecution of 109 suspects from prior reporting periods, compared with prosecuting 30 suspects during the previous reporting period. The government convicted 12 sex traffickers, compared with convicting 14 traffickers in the previous reporting period.

Human Trafficking Framework

Protection Efforts

The government increased protection efforts. The government identified and referred 291 trafficking victims to care, including 67 labor trafficking victims (65 male and two female victims, including one child), 26 sex trafficking victims (26 female victims, including 10 children), and 198 victims of unspecified forms of trafficking, compared with identifying and referring to care 74 trafficking victims the previous reporting period.

The government reported providing trafficking victims with temporary emergency shelter, food assistance, interpreters, specialized medical care, psycho-social support, vocational training, and transportation.

The Role of Data and Awareness

Improving data collection and analysis is crucial for understanding and combating human trafficking. The Counter Trafficking Data Collaborative (CTDC) is the first global data hub on human trafficking, publishing harmonized data from counter-trafficking organizations from around the world.

Awareness about human trafficking across all sectors of society remains low. In addition, perceptions are often fuelled by skewed media representations.