Sugar Girls and Seamen

Sugar Girls and Seamen explores the hidden world of dockside prostitution in Cape Town and Durban, focusing on the local women (and men) who offer sexual recreation to foreign sailors for the sake of making a living. It shows how the dockside sex trade is different from other more visible sectors (like streetwalking and brothels), explores the strategies by which the women solicit the seamen, examines the cultural dimensions of dockside relations, and reveals a world that is both mundane in its logic yet utterly distant from mainstream society. Besides the activities of the sugar girls and seamen, the narrative will animate the role of associated personnel, such as club owners, cab drivers, cops and drug merchants. By following the author – a narrator as alien to dockside sexual relations as any member of the general public – readers will have a guide to take them deeper into a reality to which they would otherwise have no access.