Pimps are apparently already recruiting their unsuspecting victims on the city’s streets, promising them better lives after the World Cup and stringing them along with cash and even drugs in the meantime.

A social worker, who declined to be named, told People’s Post that children, who will not even be teenagers by 2010, are being lured into prostitution by organised crime syndicates that plan to reap foreign currency by selling the youngsters to sex tourists.

Cape Town already has a reputation as a child sex destination and with an estimated 10 million foreigners expected to visit the country in three years’ time, those who work with street children are increasingly concerned.

But it is not only poor or neglected children who are in danger: Reports from local police stations around the country warn of teenagers being abducted at shopping malls or while walking home from school.

Their kidnappers’ intentions are to “prepare them for the World Cup”, according to the reports.

National police, however, have not identified child sex tourism as a threat specific to the upcoming event and have taken no particular steps to prevent the industry’s proliferation.

Beleaguered national commissioner Jackie Selebi suggested earlier this year that prostitution be legalised for the duration of the World Cup, seemingly for the convenience of foreign men.

While there can be no doubt he cannot have intended that commercial child sex be tolerated, such pandering to the desires of tourists has raised ire in many quarters.

Children’s and women’s rights activists believe it is precisely this off-hand attitude to the sex trade that allows the vulnerable to be preyed upon, which in turn exacerbates what is becoming a very real danger in South Africa: Human trafficking.

In fact, an abundance of research points to the fact that countries that legalised prostitution in the 1990s are experiencing a dramatic increase in child trafficking. It would seem that the “legitimate” sex industry and the underground trafficking in human flesh are closely related.

Germany, which hosted the 2006 FIFA World Cup and where prostitution is legal, met with overwhelming pressure to curb the flourishing trafficking market and took extensive measures to beef up policing and security around the event.

According to media reports following the games, there were very few cases of actual trafficking reported, and those who had feared the worst were scoffed at by soccer fans and prostitute users alike.

But Germany does not have 40 000 street children who will do anything to survive. South Africa’s thriving child sex industry is likely to continue gaining in popularity with sex tourists.

All indications at present are that the 2010 World Cup will be an opportunity for both victim and abuser to score.

Compounding the problem for street children is that the general public is mostly apathetic and unmoved by their plight.

The children themselves are so hardened by life on the streets that they can be impossible to work with, even for those trained in the field.

An independent researcher has commented in her reports that their “dislikeableness” contributes to offenders feeling justified in their abuse of the children, who are often seen as seen as dangerous criminals rather than victims.