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EACH day near Prince George Drive in Muizenberg, over 20 young women and underage girls take to the streets of the area to sell their bodies to men.

The men are mostly locals and, as 20-year-old sex worker A'isha Daniels* says, the younger the girl, the higher the price.

A'isha and six other prostitutes are currently living in a home owned by Barry Schulman on the Muizenberg side of Prince George Drive.

Schulman, who is brutally honest about his existing drug problem and criminal history, professes to have a deep empathy for the young prostitutes currently wor?king in the area.

"I realise how people view me and I've heard it said I sleep with these girls myself, but that is not true," Schulman says.

"There is no help out there for them and they work in very dangerous conditions. Besides the ones that have gone missing, some also get killed. A girl living in Cherry Street was burnt to death by rivals a year or so ago and they are constantly being assaulted by their boyfriends and quite often by the clients who pick them up. At my home they are provided with a modicum of safety," Schulman maintains.

These pick-ups, of course, are the daily bread for the sex workers and, according to A'isha, there is a constant stream of men lining up to buy sex from girls, some of whom are as young as 13.

"There is always someone looking for sex. The men would normally take you to their homes or will have sex with you in bushes near here. Some women are hurt sometimes," A'isha, who's slender frame is bedecked with old scars, says.

Retired local police officer Clifford Wyeth says that there is no easy solution to the problem he has seen escalating du?ring his time in Muizenberg.

"The police are not allowed to arrest prostitutes, even if we notice them getting into a client's car. And prostitution and the drug-related crime that follows it is a daily occurrence in the area," Wyeth says.

Though Wyeth was of the opinion that council would be able to provide a possible solution, South Peninsula Subcouncil chairperson Demetri Qually says council is powerless too.

"There is nothing we can do from our side and the entrapment methods police need to employ to get a prostitute off the street take up too much manpower and never end in much more than a fine or suspended sentence.

"Though we have not yet looked into the possibility of decriminalising prostitution, which will allow for greater regulation of the industry, it might be a possible solution in the future," Qually says.

Vivienne Lalu of the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) says the organisation has been calling for the decriminalising of adult prostitution for years.

"It is the fact that sex workers have been forced into the shadowy world of criminality that makes it so easy for organised criminals to attach themselves to the industry.

"The only possible solution for all sides would be to start talks on decriminalising prostitution," Lalu says. * Not her real name.

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