Life at an alleged brothel in Milnerton, Cape Town, for a newly arrived Cameroonian bricklayer was one long party with a steady stream of girlfriends, according to his testimony in a sex trafficking trial in the Western Cape High Court on Tuesday.
Yannick Ayuk, who pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him, told the court about the steady stream of permanent girlfriends and side girlfriends at the house in Piet Grobler Street, off Koeberg Road.
The State alleges the house was a brothel, with Yannick, his cousin Edward Ayuk, also from Yaounde in Cameroon, and Edward’s estranged wife Leandre from Springbok, recruiting drug-addicted girls and women to work for them.
They were allegedly paid in drugs and had very little freedom of movement, apart from being sent out to ply Koeberg Road for business.
One testified that she was punished by being made to sit like a frog.
Another of the witnesses did not know her age, but thought she was in her early teens at the time, giving an indication of how estranged some of the girls and women were from their families, making them easy recruits to a seemingly better life as already functioning sex workers.
The three accused pleaded not guilty to the serious charges, which include sex trafficking, debt bondage, kidnap, assault, rape and drugs offences.
They claim a crooked cop in Milnerton is framing them.
Leandre already has a previous conviction for sex work in Springbok in the Northern Cape.
Testimony went very slowly on Tuesday as the court tuned into Yannick’s fast pidgin English.
He said he arrived in South Africa in June 2017 after deciding he could not cope with the constant hostilities between the French Quarter and the English Quarter in Yaounde, the city where he was born.
He said he found a soft landing when he arrived in Cape Town with his cousin, Charles Ayuk, a nightclub owner.
Charles owns the Vanilla Lounge in Long Street in the Cape Town CBD and has lived in South Africa for almost 20 years.
He would give newly arrived relatives some work around the club or introduce them to people who could help them find jobs, to help them settle in.
At first, Yannick lived with Charles, who had two homes. One was for his wife and their child, and the second was for his girlfriend and child.
Charles was also diversifying into the room rentals business, and it was through Charles that Yannick got his first construction job, helping a Congolese contractor known only as Sam build more rooms for Charles to rent out.
Yannick worked at the club at night or early in the morning, restocking the drinks fridges, or cleaning. This is where he met Edward for the first time, although they are cousins.
READ ALSO : Sex assault accused Willem Breytenbach’s plea and sentence proposal rejected
He and Edward hit it off and started spending time together.
He would take women home to Edward’s when the club closed because Charles was a family man and did not approve of him bringing them there.
It was also “lonely and boring” at Charles’ house.
Eventually, it made sense for Yannick’s lifestyle for him to move into Edward’s house permanently.
By then, he was spending most nights there anyway, only going back to Charles’ house to change into work clothes.
Edward, Yannick, and the other men who lived at the house, like Alex, the Uber driver, were awash with girlfriends who swirled around them while they played cards with bets of R20 or R50 a hand, or debated whether to put their football betting money for a win on Arsenal, or Real Madrid, the court heard.
He said wistfully:
He said some women would just stay for the night, and others would arrive over the weekend and then leave on Monday or Tuesday.
There would be drinks parties in the driveways and meet ups at the clubs.
“Many of them were permanent girlfriends,” he said.
But juggling relationships was beginning to get complicated, Yannick testified.
He had become a close, platonic friend of one of the women in the house, an alleged victim of the sex trafficking.
He said he met her one night when Edward took him to a service at Crusades church to introduce him to four women there.
Some of the women he named testified as victims of sex trafficking.
He said everyone was praying for the woman. The two of them bonded because they were both smokers and both had small children, but theirs was a platonic relationship.
One night, a prospective permanent girlfriend arrived at the club to tell Yannick that his new friend, the one everyone prayed over at church, had told her he had two other girlfriends, so she was dumping him.
“I said that’s okay,” he testified, shrugging, adding that he found a new main girlfriend from Mitchells Plain.
He said Edward was also in a pickle at that point with a woman who he took to the house once. She kept returning when his [Edward’s] “permanent” girlfriend was there.
She would sit around awkwardly, drinking, then leave after about an hour.
This is the woman who alleges Edward raped her.
So far, much of the evidence ties in with what Edward’s estranged wife, Leandre, has testified – that the house was a party house.
She said they had married when he was a thoughtful attentive man, but once they moved to the house everything changed.
She said she then left him and went back to Springbok, but has since been accused of trafficking girls and women from there to Cape Town for the house.
Yannick said everything was fine in the house, but it all changed the night that Edward’s latest additional girlfriend discovered he had a “permanent” girlfriend.
The court had heard previously that this woman alleges that Edward raped her when she was sleeping in his bed while waiting for her clothes to dry.
The court has discharged all but this charge of rape, after a previous application during the trial.
He said that when he was arrested he barely knew his way around Cape Town, and asked the court to go easy on his inability to identify places during his testimony.
“I have spent more time in South Africa in prison than outside,” he lamented.
The trial will continue on Wednesday, with Yannick continuing with his tale of life at the house.
One thought on “Sex trafficking accused describes life of girlfriends, gambling and clubs”