Womxn: Working

In 2014, conflict brewed between members of a community policing forum and sex workers in the suburb of Glenwood, Durban. The community wanted the sex workers out at any cost.

The sex workers filed complaints with the Commission for Gender Equality, citing physical and verbal attacks. In response, the CGE swiftly called for a town-hall-style meeting to ease the rising
tensions.

At the time, I was a young filmmaker living and working in the area. I would occasionally interact with the sex workers outside my local punk dive bar. Though I didn't know much about the situation, I couldn't understand how the fear of declining property values could justify the blatant disrespect and abuse of people just trying to make a living. It was at that community meeting that I realised the urgency and complexity of the issue. The divide between the two groups left me with the desire to dig deeper and better understand the intersection of law, gender, and community dynamics.

Instead of diving straight into filming, we left the cameras behind to attend Creative Space meetings, monthly gatherings organised by the sex worker advocacy group, Sisonke. These were educational and empowering spaces where sex workers could meet, discuss their experiences, and reflect on their activism.
At these meetings, we screened documentaries about sex work and discussed the representation of sex workers in the media. It was clear that so much of what we see and hear about sex workers, while sometimes rooted in the realities of sex work, often frames them as victims. This prevailing narrative around sex work was incomplete, reductive, and filled with assumptions. The women I met were not merely victims or objects of pity, but fighters, advocates, and agents of change.

Womxn: Working explores this deeply polarising debate surrounding sex work in South Africa, where discussions often focus on morality and the commodification of sex, without
acknowledging that at its core, sex work is about women’s autonomy over their bodies. The activists featured in this film are passionate advocates for sex workers and marginalised
communities, and they stress that the central issue in the debate is the well-being and rights of women—particularly black women who are disproportionately forced into sex work due to the
systemic poverty created by neo-liberal capitalism.

The development of Womxn: Working has been a labour of dedication, passion and conviction, I have had to continuously reassess my approach, building a relationship of trust, a degree of
empathy and a level of clarity about the issues involved to enable us to tell this story from a place of integrity and authenticity. I want to challenge the societal stereotypes of sex workers by
giving them the space to define themselves. It was crucial for me to make a film that centers their voices—not to speak for them, echoing the motto used by sex workers in the movement, Nothing about us without us.

Following these activists over the last ten years, there have been some significant victories towards law reform, but there have also been some devastating setbacks and heartbreaking
losses, the promise of decriminalisation forever seems only just out of reach, despite tireless years of activism. South Africa is at a critical juncture in its debate around sex work. Despite
increasing momentum for decriminalisation, significant opposition remains. The country’s current legal framework criminalises sex work, subjecting sex workers, especially women, to violence, exploitation, and systemic poverty. As the government faces growing pressure from both activists and international human rights organisations, this is the moment to amplify the
voices of those at the heart of this struggle.

For me, as a woman filmmaker of colour navigating a world where we still have to fight for our voices to be heard, in a country where lasting effects of our unequal past are still evident in our
daily lives, the making of this film is so much more than a creative endeavour to me, it is entrenched in my pursuit for justice.
Ultimately I want to create a film that invites society to genuinely understand the debate around decriminalisation of sex work and to question the value system of society which condemns only women for those acts that are considered ‘sinful’, while protecting and enabling men to perpetuate violence against women.
I hope this film will contribute to the discourse around the issue and add to a canon of radical, women-centred storytelling.