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Hard-hitting ad tackles rape
03/05/2006 14:38 - (SA)
Johannesburg - As former deputy president Jacob Zuma braces for a verdict in his rape case, the issue is being highlighted by an actress recounting her real life rape ordeals in a hard-hitting TV commercial, running at the same time as news of the court drama.
In the commercial, Tinah Mnumzane loads a revolver with bullets while she says: "I was raped for the first time when I was eight. I survived. I was raped again when I was 10. I survived. I was raped when I was 25, 30, 32.
"And even when I was raped for the sixth time, I survived. The thing that almost killed me was not my rapist, it was you, my relatives, friends, neighbours, that pretended not to have known anything. I wanted to kill you. By not doing so, I saved myself."
2800 women raped every day
She signs off saying: "2800 women will be raped today. Help them survive. Give them support."
According to police records, some 55 000 rape cases were recorded in 2005. Rape crisis organisations say only one in nine rapes are reported to the police.
Sheilla Kubheka, the director of the commercial, defends its in-your-face approach, saying South Africans had to be jolted into reality to confront one of the world's highest incidences of rape.
"You can't beat around the bush about this," she said. "You have to be straightforward. That's the only way ... That's what we need in this country."
Catalyst
The spot is being aired on e.tv and M-Net and will be shown on SABC soon, says Kevin Aspoas from the Jupiter Drawing Room, which supervised its making.
"In isolation, the anti-rape TV commercial is not important. But if it can be a catalyst, then it actually serves the purpose. That's why we, unashamedly, use quite provocative stories," he said.
The current commercial is the third in a series of anti-rape messages, launched in 1999 which provoked debate.
Controversy over Charlize rape spot
In an earlier commercial, Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron lashes out at the stereotype of the hard-living, outdoorsy South African men.
"People often ask me what the men are like in South Africa. Well, if you consider that more women are raped in South Africa than in any country in the world ... It's not that easy to say what the men in South Africa are like, because there would seem to be so few of them out there," she says.
The Theron advertisement drew a range of reactions from bouquets to brickbats.
But after widespread complaints that it was an unfair condemnation of South African manhood, the advertising watchdog ordered its withdrawal but later allowed the ad to be aired again.
Shock people out of their apathy
Chantel Cooper, head of Rape Crisis and one of the main brains behind the TV commercials, said it was important to shock people out of their apathy.
"Rape happens so often, you see it so often in the papers, it has almost become a norm (...) people become used to hearing about rape."
- AFP
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South Africa
