HDNet World Report Presents an Expose on the Modern Slave Trade: Human Trafficking in South Africa

Correspondent Paul Beban goes undercover to report on the atrocity of human trafficking in South Africa on the eve of the World Cup - Tuesday, June 16 at 9:00 p.m. ET

"HDNet World Report," HDNet's award-winning weekly news program, will present the results of an undercover investigation into the human trafficking that still exists in many African countries - and the untold damage it does to its many victims.

It's estimated that worldwide, over a million people are bought and sold every year, and, as South Africans plan for the massive influx of soccer fans flocking to the World Cup next year - many of them looking for prostitutes - their country still does not have a plan to stop or even police the ever-growing trade in human beings.

HDNet's correspondent, Paul Beban discovered first-hand how easy it is to purchase a human being in South Africa, all you need is the money and the will. Wearing a hidden camera, Beban is able to capture these traffickers on film and nearly completes a purchase to acquire ten women for about $400.00 US dollars apiece.

"The ease with which one can make a deal for the life of another human being is terrifying," says Beban. "For the traffickers, this was just another business transaction. For the girls, some as young as fifteen or sixteen, this was a sentence to a life of suffering."

"HDNet World Report" also travels to a place aptly named "Amazing Grace," a refuge near the border of South Africa and Mozambique that is filled with children who have been rescued from the nightmare of human trafficking.

These children are sometimes sold into slavery and prostitution when their own families are deceived by traffickers, and are then threatened with violence and death if they do not comply.

"They told me they will shoot me and I will die. Or they will shoot my legs and I wouldn't be able to walk ever in my life," said Sharon who was sold into slavery by her own uncle at the young age of fifteen.

"HDNet World Report - South Africa's Shame: Modern-Day Slavery and the World Cup," premieres on HDNet, Tuesday, June 16 at 9:00 p.m. ET with a re-air at midnight ET to accommodate West Coast Prime Time.