The sex workers who ply their trade at an infamous spot known as Dzithangani handed a memorandum of grievances to the Makhado police station on Friday afternoon.

When Limpopo Mirror's reporter tried to speak with the concerned sex workers on Monday and Tuesday to find out exactly what was in the memorandum, some of them did not want to disclose the contents of the document. Some, however, agreed to speak with the newspaper, on condition of anonymity.

“Don't try to turn our revolution into a joke,” one sex worker said at Dzithangani on Monday. “Go away! Go and write whatever you want.”

Another group of sex workers, however, indicated that they had decided to hand in a memorandum after excessive abuse from the side of the police, "who always come to harass us when we are busy doing our business at Dzithangani. They just arrest us and give us a R1 500 fine,” they said.

“That's not the kind of treatment we want. If they feel that selling sex is a crime, they must charge us for selling sex. We want freedom to sell sex without any disturbance from anybody, including the police.”

The spokesperson for the Makhado police, Capt Maano Sadiki, confirmed that they had received a memorandum and that it would soon be forwarded to the office of the provincial commissioner for consideration. “They are expressing their unhappiness on certain issues and we will respond appropriately by next week, when our seniors have finished considering the case,” Sadiki. He did not elaborate on what the “certain issues” were at that stage.

In one of our previous reports on Dzithangani, the women who agreed to speak to us were adamant that the "no-prostitution" operation by the SAPS would never stop them from conducting business in town (Article in Limpopo Mirror, 24 August 2012). “You can't sell sex in the village,” they said.