Shining a light on a hidden crime
Trafficked.Africa spotlights myths and realities of human trafficking in regions where little tangible knowledge and data exists.
Human trafficking data and information in Africa is scarce. Speculation and misinformation have dogged public debate around the issue, but one thing is certain: poverty and inequality make traffickers’ jobs far easier.
Code for Africa, with support from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), has launched Trafficked.Africa, which aims to tell the stories of vulnerable communities and provide concrete data and resources to help track real information on this underreported crime.
Our project starts in southern Africa where, in some parts, communities live in fear of an organised crime driven by profit and desperation.
This project first began in 2018 when we documented the stories of brave survivors from across the continent. That was when we met Grizelda Grootboom.
The stories behind the data
When she was 8 years old, the apartheid government tore Grootboom from her family home in Woodstock, a sought-after neighbourhood in Cape Town, South Africa. Losing her home led her to live in Khayelitsha, a well-known township just outside the city. She was sexually assaulted at 18, and became homeless. Desperate for a way out of her distress, Grootboom befriended a wealthy young woman who promised her a better life in Johannesburg. She excitedly made the move. But once she arrived, her friend disappeared and her dream of a prosperous new beginning violently broke down.
“Instead, I was tied up, beaten, and injected with drugs for nearly two weeks. I was essentially forced into addiction and kept as a sex slave,” Grootboom said.
For eight years, Grootboom sold her body for drugs. Her ordeal ended after she managed to flee Johannesburg when a pastor asked her to traffic drugs to Cape Town.
She is now one of South Africa’s most well-known and outspoken survivors of sexual trafficking.
“I was one of the lucky ones,” she said.
Grootboom’s story intimately portrays the violence and trauma trafficking survivors endure. While she believes that she was among the few to escape human trafficking, a complete database which shows the extent of human trafficking in southern Africa is hard to find. This creates barriers to access of information which could help activists to protect communities from further harm.
Challenges finding trafficking data in Africa
Since we last spoke to Grootboom, few improvements have been made to make trafficking data easier to find. The United States’ annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report identified 377 victims of trafficking in South Africa in 2019. However, NGOs have alleged that the country’s human trafficking reponse is marred by state incompetencies, including police failure to investigate human trafficking cases and identify victims. Additionally, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Botswana will form part of the initial countries we’re focusing on where trafficking data is equally difficult to find.
So, how is it possible to know the true extent of trafficking in these countries?
The iLab, Code for Africa’s in-house forensic investigative team, has tackled this question from a unique angle not researched in southern Africa before: how do traffickers use social media to recruit victims? Interviews with experts in Europe, East Africa, South Africa, and the United States indicated the difficulty of accessing data in southern Africa, and how far behind access to information is in this region relative to the rest of the world.
In the US, much research has been done to identify the language — the unique slang — traffickers use online to communicate with their networks. But very little work has been done in southern Africa. It’s still unclear if this exists or whether traffickers have a different technique in this region
Our team of data researchers sought to track the data to help contextualise and provide basic knowledge on human trafficking in southern Africa. Local police and government data was near impossible to find, so they turned to well-recognised international sources such as the Counter Trafficking Data Collaborative (CTDC) and the United States Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report — which uses data from governments around the world to compile statistics on human trafficking in various regions. The CTDC data on human trafficking lacked information on southern African contexts, leaving the TIP to be the only reliable data source we could use as a starting point.
How we’re navigating the challenges
With a lack of data, and the need to redevelop our investigative strategy, Trafficked.Africa has concluded that on-the-ground reporting will be one of the key factors to shine a light on trafficking and access more information. To realise this, we’ve partnered with the Ink Centre for Investigative Journalism in Botswana, New Frame in South Africa and Carta de Moçambique in Mozambique. We have also partnered with two illustrators to bring these narratives to life with dignity and sensitivity.
Graphic story-telling is a vibrant and creative means to help readers better relate to and understand human trafficking. Celebrated illustrators Zinhle Zulu and Ndumiso Nyoni both privilege African culture in their work, with a particular emphasis on the importance of women. Their works will centre how women are vulnerable to trafficking, how traffickers exploit them, and the way in which labour-, sex- and child-trafficking are realities in regions of southern Africa. The illustrated stories will help audiences engage with often violent content in a sensitive manner, and also keep survivors anonymous who wish to remain so.
Grootboom’s story is a brave account of the suffering vulnerable women endure, and her campaigning is a dedicated call to end human trafficking. This project aims to build on her work.
Trafficked.Africa uses data, narrative storytelling and investigative research to shine a light on the myths and realities of human trafficking so as to raise awareness and provide actionable data about this crime in regions where little reliable knowledge exists.
If you’d like to get involved in this project, please contact us on trafficking@codeforafrica.org.
Trafficked.Africa is an initiative of Code for Africa, with support from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit.
About GIZ
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH is a global service provider in the field of international cooperation for sustainable development. GIZ has over 50 years of experience in a wide variety of areas, including economic development and employment, energy and the environment, and peace and security. As a public-benefit federal enterprise, GIZ supports the German Government — in particular the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) — and public and private sector clients in around 130 countries in achieving their objectives in international cooperation. With this aim, GIZ works together with its partners to develop effective solutions that offer people better prospects and sustainably improve their living conditions.
About Code for Africa
Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest network of civic technology and data journalism labs, with teams in 12 countries. CfA builds digital democracy solutions that give citizens unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions, and that strengthens civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability. This includes building infrastructure like the continent’s largest open data portals at openAFRICA and sourceAFRICA, as well as incubating initiatives as diverse as the africanDRONE network, the PesaCheck fact-checking initiative and the sensors.AFRICA air quality sensor network.
CfA also manages the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR), which gives the continent’s finest muckraking newsrooms the best possible forensic data tools, digital security and whistleblower encryption to help improve their ability to tackle crooked politicians, organised crime and predatory big business. CfA also runs one of Africa’s largest skills development initiatives for digital journalists, and seed funds cross-border collaboration.
Newsroom Partners
New Frame is a not-for-profit, social justice digital media publication based in Johannesburg, Gauteng. The publication is committed to careful and factually accurate reporting, and to working with people of integrity. New Frame chases quality, not clicks.
Carta de Moçambique is an online journalism platform, created to be the leading source of quality information of its kind in Mozambique. It produces non-partisan, critical and independent investigative journalism in the public interest.
The Ink Centre for Investigative Journalism is an independent, non-profit investigative journalism newsroom in Gaborone, Botswana. The Centre mentors young reporters working under significant budget constraints. Its work focuses exclusively on truly important stories.
Contributors
Zinhle Zulu: Illustrator
Ndumiso Nyoni: Illustrator and Motion Designer
Shamiso Mlilo: Social Media Manager
Mosidi Mokaeya: Journalist, Ink Centre for Investigative Journalism
Marta Afonso: Journalist, Carta de Moçambique
Jan Bornman: Journalist, New Frame
Sylvia Makinia: Fact-Checker, PesaCheck
James Okong’o: Fact-Checker, PesaCheck
Credits
Project Managers: Ashlin Simpson, Ra’eesa Pather, Siyabonga Africa
Editors: Ra’eesa Pather
Data: Tricia Govindasamy, Mercy Karagi, Emma Kisa
Investigations: Allan Cheboi, Leon Vambe, Jean Githae
Map / Visualisations: Tricia Govindasamy, Sakina Salem
Design: Piero Zagami
