Follow the money and a different picture emerges. In Johannesburg's nightclubs and on social media, young South African women who openly seek out wealthy older men to fund luxury lifestyles call themselves 'slay queens'. What looks like empowerment and financial independence online conceals a far riskier reality: a system that preys on extreme poverty and leaves women vulnerable to violence.
The mathematics of South African inequality makes this choice understandable. South Africa is the most economically unequal country in the world, with more than a third of the population living below the poverty line. For young women without formal employment, a relationship with a wealthy older man, locally called a "blesser", promises an escape route. As one slay queen explained, "You end up having a life that even a teacher in South Africa cannot afford, just because of your looks."
These women post on Instagram and TikTok with designer handbags, luxury cars and expensive apartments, often openly crediting their wealthy older partners for funding the lifestyle. Some report that their partners have even purchased apartments for them. In a country where opportunity is scarce, the proposition is seductive.
But the financial arrangement comes with dangerous baggage. More than one in three South African women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime, according to 2024 data published by South Africa's Human Sciences Research Council. The violence is not abstract: an average of 115 rapes were reported each day in 2024/25 according to national police statistics.
The pursuit of transactional relationships, particularly for those living in poverty, can ultimately lead to a heightened risk of violence, abduction and trafficking. One volunteer search coordinator who runs the National Neighbourhood Watch and Missing Persons Unit spends his days searching for girls who disappear. The phenomenon has become familiar enough that specialist organisations exist solely to track missing women.
The slay queen economy flourishes because of the structural conditions that create it. High levels of domestic violence, combined with the absence of men supporting childcare or household needs, have made women more pragmatic in their dealings with men, according to self-described slay queen Habiba Makgatho. Women say they can no longer afford the cost of loving men. It is a rational response to irrational inequality.
The backlash has been fierce. Critics view slay queens as representing a new kind of transactional dating culture that has become a pain point for many South African bachelors. But the criticism misses the point. These women are not creating systemic inequality; they are navigating it. In post-apartheid South Africa, both black men and women have embraced American hustle culture, yet most remain locked out of the country's wealth. Rather than confronting systemic injustice, many have turned their frustrations inward against each other with devastating consequences for black women.
What the glamorous social media posts obscure is a simple truth: a woman cannot negotiate her way out of an unequal system. She can only survive within it. The slay queen phenomenon is not evidence of female agency; it is evidence of state failure. When a young woman must choose between poverty and the risk of violence, something fundamental in the social contract has broken down.