The trafficking of children for purposes of sexual exploitation

Eietydse Geskiedenis en Navorsing at the University of the Free State was requested to do to a
search for newspaper articles for the period 1997 - March 2000. Other source material was obtained
through local libraries and resource centres, international and South African Internet search engines
and Molo Songololo's in-house collection of materials. Literature was also obtained through
personal correspondence with researchers attached to academic institutions.
4.4. Data analysis and interpretation
4.4.1 Interviews with children
Interviews of children were analysed by using an ethnographic analysis. Focusing on the ways
interviewees spoke of one another and made sense of the events that they experienced allowed for
the construction of a picture of meaning of relationships to people and the language that people used
to describe each other and the events, which took place.
None of the child interviewees spoke English as a first language. However two of the 19 children
preferred to do their interviews in English. The remaining 17, interviews were conducted in
Afrikaans. The interview with the one young woman was also conducted in Afrikaans. Two
members of the research team have not only a proficient understanding of the Afrikaans language,
but also have the necessary cultural understanding of words to allow for equivalence of meaning.
This was particularly important as meanings of words can vary or entirely different words may be
employed in referring to the same phenomena.
The transcriber also has a proficient knowledge to allow for accuracy in transcription. In addition
field researchers notes were also used to clarify certain aspects of interviews. The interviews ranged
from 30-minute interviews to 70-minute interviews, with the average length being 45 minutes.
4.4.2. Interviews with organisations and individuals
The average length of these interviews was 45 minutes. Most of these interviews were tape recorded
and transcribed. Field researchers' notes were used as complementary to these transcriptions. The
purpose of these interviews was to obtain information about particular aspects of relevance to the
research. Most of the information was of a professional nature. In these cases a system of coding
was used to determine which relevant aspects were being talked about. These were then classified
according to the category of data that they belonged to.
4.4.3. Analysis of the literature
This comprised three aspects. In the first instance, data was collected from international sources and
from South East Asia in particular. This was done with the purpose of identifying key areas of
research and intervention as well as identifying the conceptual and methodological issues raised by
the material.
In the second instance attempts were made to locate South African research documents on the topic.
In the third instance a survey of newspaper articles for the period January 1997 - March 2000 was
conducted with the intention of establishing what the themes covered by this sector of the print
media, are.
This analysis of literature allowed for the identification of phenomena and the definition of concepts
to guide the initial phase of the research.
4.5. Report writing
The report was written to firstly provide information and analysis to national, international and
regional organisations with a view to inform social policy and legal reform. It was written secondly
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