A great evil that is about to unfold

In South Africa, preparations are being made for next year's World Cup, an event which most soccer-apathetic Americans pay little attention to, but to the rest of the world, it is the Olympics, the Super Bowl, and the Final Four all rolled into one. Nearly half a million fans will come to South Africa to watch, to party, and to revel. And on the streets of Durban,
Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Cape Town, a great evil is about to unfold. Shame on the world if we let it happen.

In 2007, the police commissioner of South Africa first floated the idea of legalizing prostitution during the World Cup, so as to allow police to focus on more pressing matters. (Another unspoken motive is to match the standard of hospitality set by Germany in 2006, which also facilitated legal access to alcohol and prostitutes.) The proposal is still alive, even though church groups in South Africa and human rights groups condemned it. Now the president of the country, Jacob Zuma, has apparently repudiated the idea too.

Sigh of relief? Not so fast. We Americans, with an eye toward the integrity of our own criminal justice system, have a misplaced faith in the power of the law to make right. The truth is, the legal status of prostitution in South Africa could end up mattering little. Large sporting events (and even, I'm told, American political conventions) cause a spike in the sex trade. But forgive my euphemism. Let's say it this way: lots of people who travel great distances for once-in-a-lifetime events go to prostitutes as part of the experience. Especially when the event is held in a country full of desperately poor people, so the sex is plentiful and cheap. Simple economics suggest and history confirms that the demand for sex will be met. And many of those being shopped around to sex-seeking tourists will be minors - children.

So the lay of the land is this: tourists wealthy enough to travel by plane to South Africa will be flooding the country to watch an event known to be accompanied by revelry, and dealers in sex stand to make lots of money. That's the point. Whether South Africa makes it easy for the dealers by legalizing and "regulating" the practice, as Germany did in 2006, or whether they force it somewhat underground rests on what is done with the police commissioner's suggestion. But the practice wouldn't have to go very far underground, in any case. For one thing, South Africa has no laws on its books to combat human trafficking. It has signed something called the Palermo Protocol, but done nothing to implement that international agreement. As a result, its police have zero training in stopping a practice that isn't even technically illegal there. For another, South Africa has a violent crime problem, and protecting tourists' safety - not monitoring their leisure time - will be the goal of the 30,000 police officers who will staff the event.

This has become the pattern with international sporting events. The welfare of the native population takes a back seat to visitors' comfort and convenience and corporate profits. While I wouldn't accuse China of bending over backwards for visitors like me at last year's Olympics, my dollars carried a lot more clout than a Chinese citizenship card. They thought nothing of evicting scores of low-income tenants from their homes in order to construct marvelous-looking stadiums that now sit empty. Their pre-emption of political protest was over-the-top and efficient, and they were able to use the fear of terrorism as pretense for restricting everyone's rights. In the end, they put forward the "glorious China" they wanted everyone to see, while the reality behind the cameras was a lot uglier. But I digress.

In South Africa, not only are there millions of poor and hopeless in the rural townships, but let us not forget the tiny kingdom that lies to the northeast, Swaziland, which has the highest AIDS rate of any country in the world (42%) and consequently a huge population of kids who have no money, no parents, and no futures. Connect the dots: how much money would a pimp have to promise desperate young Swazi boys and girls to cross the border with him and enter the sex trade in South Africa?

Love soccer, hate soccer, boycott the World Cup and its sponsors, or watch - whatever. It's clear that we are marching toward a humanitarian disaster regardless of the decision South Africa makes on legalization just because of the culture surrounding the tournament. But the one thing you must do is pay attention. I was alarmed when I first heard of this almost two months ago, and everyone I've mentioned this to has been similarly incredulous and dismayed. There will be action campaigns around this issue that will formulate in the coming months. We must pay attention.

And we must do so because people are not for sale. To miss that is to miss the significance of the work of Creation. God made nature, yes, and the world is wonderful and beautiful and mysterious and we rightly cry foul when a beautiful work of nature is marred - BUT - humans? They are the crown jewels. The rest of creation was placed under our stewardship to care for and consume; it is only of people that the Bible says, "in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."

Why don't we care? Why don't I care? Distance, the invisible nature of trafficking, our own apparent powerlessness to stop it have something to do with it. But it also has something to do with this: "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." No less a practitioner of evil than Joseph Stalin knew of what he spoke, responsible as he was for the deaths of millions of his countrymen whom he perceived to be disloyal. Evil has a way of benefiting from its scope - the more widespread its practice, the less powerful we feel to act to stop it (because it's "normal" or "everywhere").

But whether only one child is being sold into sex slavery or millions are, we have to care about human trafficking because these are real people. So, personalize it. Imagine an actual young person (12-20 years old) traded into slavery to perform sex acts on strangers being a real person. Imagine it is someone you know. Imagine it's your own child. How many times would they have to be "purchased" before you'd be so angry and heartbroken that you'd be ready to call every senator and every representative on Capitol Hill and storm the halls of Congress if you needed to in order to get justice for your son or daughter? Because everyone who is sold to perform sex acts for money is someone's son or someone's daughter. How many times would they need to be violated for their whole future to collapse into a black hole of trauma?

Yes, I believe in the power of God to renovate hearts, and I want to see hearts change and to celebrate the miracle of regeneration. When people begin to act rightly - toward themselves, each other, and God - on account of a contrite heart and a renewed spirit, and the change is willing, not coerced, it's an amazing thing. But I've been naïve. If it's not legitimate to use the force of power - economic, political, social, and even military - to restrain injustice, then it can't be legitimate to use power anywhere. Evil thrives on power imbalances. When we won't fight fire with fire, we get backed into a corner of humiliation and despair.

And yet, in the face of the existence of 27 million slaves and a world economic structure that facilitates exploitation and a sporting culture that normalizes cash for sex, I do not lose heart. I do not lose heart because as a Christian, I know that the light has come into the world and the darkness cannot overcome it. I know that the greatest evil of all, death, could not hold Jesus and so the promise of new life for the rest of us is very real. I know that if God is for us, no one can stand against us. And I know that evil hates the light, and will avoid it so as not to be exposed. But, as we live the truth - not just believe it in our heads or profess it with our mouths, but really live it - that people, all people, have intrinsic value and worth, the lie that certain people are commodities and can be used for the unjust enrichment of others will begin to erode. As we esteem everyone's life - not just biological life, but the whole experience and quality of life - we are teaching ourselves, over and over, that even nameless, faceless child laborers and prostitutes and migrant workers and domestics around the world do matter.

Regarding the dignity of all people (or, if it's helpful, "the dignity of each person") has to be step one in the formation of a justice orientation in our character. And the truth is contagious, even when it's inconvenient. Pay attention, because the exploitation of humans - all humans, but especially children - is so wrong that the more we consider it, the more it demands a response. You wouldn't allow your own child to be in such a situation, so how has this become a norm for millions? The unjust norm has there displaced the norm of justice. Love your own child who is safe and lives free from exploitation, yes, but know too that as you exhibit either concern or disregard for neighbors, strangers, and foreigners, you are building within kids either a love for justice and fair treatment for all, or an indifference toward those outside their personal sphere.

Am I my brother's keeper? The better question is, who is my brother? It's not that no one cares about individual children working as sex slaves. It's just that the enormity and anonymity of the practice alongside our modern culture's hyper-individualism and hedonism has produced the looming tragedy that is South Africa's World Cup. We need to pay attention to this, so that the whole world will pay attention, so that the injustice we wouldn't tolerate for one doesn't become the norm inflicted on the many. Remember that each sex worker sold during the World Cup will have a name, a home village, a mom and a dad, and a story. They don't lose any of that upon being exploited. Pray that they don't lose their future either.