The Materiality of Everyday Sex: Thinking beyond 'prostitution'

“My father, even he, is a sugar daddy, ” said Bongani glancing towards my surprised face. “He tells you this? ” I asked. “Yes, we are both men.” During the six months that I had stayed at Isithebe Informal Settlement, many people had told me about “sugar daddies”, although it was mostly from the perspective of youth and not the “sugar daddies ” themselves. Soon after our conversation, however, the twenty-year-old Bongani arrived with notes from a discussion that he had held with his father. The man was happy to talk about “sugar daddies ” for an American-based researcher, Bongani said. We read through the notes. “Sugar daddies work at rms that pay a lot. The girls can never stay without qomaing (choosing a lover) them, because if they don’t qoma they won’t get things like money, cell-phones and clothes.” “Sugar daddies don’t like their families to know, but they want their friends to know. They say that they are isoka (successful man with girls), they are successful.” “It is easier to get a girl in the township than in the informal settlement. There are laws emakhaya (in the rural areas, where the informal settlement is situated) not like in the location. In the township the children say whatever. No one knows where they go. They return at any time.” “And Township girls like fashion too much, ” Bongani added to his father’s comments. These “sugar daddy ” relationships, as discussed by Bongani and his father, are an example of the widespread link between gifts and sex that this article examines. These type of relations fall outside of both local and Western de nitions of “prostitution ” — the usual focus of studies on the materiality of