Foreign fans caught up in Cape Town strip club raid

CAPE TOWN - Foreign fans who travelled to South Africa for the World Cup were among those arrested in a raid on a Cape Town strip club, media reports said Sunday.

Police raided a strip club called Arabesque in the coastal city in the early hours of Saturday, arresting 17 patrons and around three dozen exotic dancers - many of them also foreigners - the Weekend Argus reported.

Two Dutch and one Briton were among the customers taken into custody, although they were later released.

Most of the exotic dancers were from Russia, Bulgaria and the Ukraine and are accused of entering the country illegally to take advantage of a spike in sex work during the World Cup, the newspaper said.

Many working girls, mainly from South Africa and surrounding countries, have been plying their trade in the bars of Cape Town’s Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, picking up customers from the male-dominated hordes of foreign fans, witnesses say.