Hookers, Futbol, Condoms and Fans

The Wold Cup will bring some 400,000 people to South Africa this June. Mostly male, the soccer fans attract a specific sort of service provider: the sex worker. According to South Africa’s Drug Central Authority, some 40,000 sex workers will be arriving as well from all over the world.

The Global Post reports on other local preparations:

Henry Africa, 49, drives a taxi in Cape Town and, aside from the usual airport pickups and winery tours, he also operates the “Bright Red Tour,” which he expects to be a hit among soccer fans. For the equivalent of 500 dollars, he’ll shuttle customers from strip bar to strip bar all night and even bring them over to a safe-sex practicing prostitute, a relevant selling point in a country where one in five adults are estimated to be HIV positive.

Despite jolly preparations for the rowdy futbol fanatics, the tourism board of the Cape tourism board has issued a code to try to curb sex tourism and AIDS awareness campaigns have been launched.

Even the president. Jacob Zuma, who is a polygamist with four wives and father of at least 20 children, asked the United Kingdom to supply 1 billion extra condoms to South Africa before the tournament. Britain to date has sent 42 million condoms, “a number sufficient to supply almost every citizen of South Africa with one condom or every tourist expected to travel there with one hundred,” according to the Global Post.

In this instance, it’s not just joga bonito. It’s play safe, too.

Image created by us using the South Africa 2010 FIFA World Cup logo. Information from the Global Post.