WATCH: Artist revives Charlize Theron’s 1999 anti-rape ad that was banned for offending men
The actress spoke about the country's shocking rape statistics and commented on how this reflected on the men of the country.
A still image from Charlize Theron’s 1999 anti-rape ad that was banned for being offensive
The recent deaths of various South African women have brought the topic of femicide and rape to the fore and this has prompted South African visual artist, Lady Skollie (real name Laura Windvogel) to revive a 1999 anti-rape ad featuring actress Charlize Theron.
Dressed in all black against a black background and sporting a short, blunt hair-do, Theron says “people often ask me what the men are like in South Africa” before reciting the country’s shocking rape statistics.
“Well, if you consider the fact that more women are raped in South Africa than any other country in the world, that one out of three women will be raped in their lifetime in South Africa, that every 26 seconds a woman is raped in South Africa and perhaps worst of all that the rest of the men in South Africa seem to think that rape isn’t their problem, it’s not that easy to WHAT the men in South Africa are like… because there seem to be so few of them out there,” said Theron.
The video then fades to black before the logos for Rape Crisis Cape Town and The Trauma Centre appear. The organisations, working alongside women’s magazine Femina, spearheaded the campaign.
A Charlize Theron banned ad from 1999. Fast forward 20 years and it's only gotten worse. 🇿🇦 @CharlizeAfrica pic.twitter.com/87DYedFGHx
— Lady Skollie (@LadySkollie) September 3, 2019
According to The Guardian, the South African Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned the ad in 1999 because a men’s group called A Group of Concerned Men complained that it offended them.
The group said that the ad implied that all South African men were rapists.
Although ASA disagreed with the group on that point, the organisation still banned the advert on the grounds that it was “discriminatory on the basis of gender” because it criticised men as a group.
“This ad was saying that half of South Africa’s men are rapists and the other half condone rape,” said ASA’s then-chairperson, Peter Vundla.
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