This newspaper breaks tradition to highlight the painful truths of GBV and call on every reader to reject the silence.
For print journalists, there is nothing more sacred than our pages – as any advertising sales executive will tell you following a toe-to-toe standoff with an editor about whether ads will disrupt a layout.
Today, we break a rule by allowing one of our “holy spaces” – the tops of every news page in the front of this newspaper – to be “taken over” by an advertiser.
Why did we do this? We would be lying if we tried to deny there is revenue involved for us.
But, sometimes, a campaign can have a social importance and impact which transcends the money question. This is one such campaign.
We urge you to look at the tops of those pages. And to take in what those sparse sentences say. But, more than that, think about what those words mean.
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They are excuses. The sort of excuses men often use to abuse women. (And, let’s be frank, the overwhelming majority of gender abuse is by men on women.)
Look at them and you realise: Those excuses are pathetic. They’re made all the more so because there can be no reason for a man to raise his hand against a woman.
Gender-based violence (GBV) is the scourge of South Africa and no matter how much we talk about it and how much government ministers and others promise to do something, it just seems to get worse.
That is why we need campaigns such as this and from an advertiser – Carling Black Label – which seeks no kudos for its role but realises that, as a seller of alcohol, which is the spark of many incidents of domestic violence, it has a moral obligation to speak out and do what it can.
It also acknowledges that GBV is not something for others to fix. We have to do it ourselves.
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