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I approached producing this 1/2 hour special on the issue of rape in South Africa with great trepidation, for a number of reasons. Firstly, the issue is of sexual assault is predominantly a female one; that is, the crime is perpetrated mostly against women by men and I am indeed male. The idea of presenting the story from my singular perspective initially seemed profoundly unfair. But then I spoke to Charlene Smith, South Africa's main anti-rape activist (and herself a rape survivor) and she assured me that it takes all people: men and women to fight against the epidemic of sexual assault against women around the world. It was OK. The statistics of rape in South Africa are truly staggering: Upon arriving in Johannesburg we were struck by the feeling in the air. Not the heat, nor the humidity, but overwhelming tension, the sense that something, anything, could happen at any time, anywhere.
Although I am left with the residue of some of that, moreover I am inspired by the women who lived through being raped; by their resolve; by their compassion (sometimes for their attackers); and by their sheer will to emerge from their long dark tunnel better than they were when they entered it. The human animal is just that in many ways: some men will always rape…but some men will also always care. That is where the hope lies. Brad Brough
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So cameraman Basil Young and I left for South Africa to unearth one of many true tragedies of modern-day South Africa; RAPE.
Johannesburg has one of the worst rates of violent crimes in the world and as we traveled (with armed security) throughout the townships (Soweto, Kahtlehong, Alexandra) and downtown JoBurg we noticed that there were literally no white faces on the streets. White South Africans (and their businesses) around Johannesburg have retreated to the walled-in, security controlled suburbs that surround the city. They live in houses within razor-wire wrapped walls, they often drive their cars with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on a weapon, (sales of stick-shift automobiles have recently declined drastically for just this reason) and they shop in massive 'entertainment complexes' with heavily controlled entryways; mini Sun-Cities as it were.
The Blacks have mostly stayed in the townships that they were forced into during the Apartheid era and have been left alone to occupy the mostly run-down, decaying city center. Forced segregation by the letter of the law is a thing of the past, but is, in reality, still very much a way of life. Basil (who is Jamaican-Canadian) called it the "donut effect," dark in the middle, sprinkled with white icing (with a big gaping hole in the middle).
I decided that the most effective way of conveying the true brutality and horror of the crime of rape was to have survivors themselves tell their stories of the attacks and how it's affected their lives. I ran the risk of exploiting women who have already been through enough; Emily, who has lived with the image in her head of her 6-year old daughter Emily being violently raped in a forest; Nunu, a mother of a small girl who was gang-raped and is now HIV +; Penny, 17, who was gang-raped in a field while her bound and gagged boyfriend was forced to watch; and others who didn't even make it into the program.
I was again comforted by Charlene Smith who supported my approach. She is a working journalist in Johannesburg who wrote a first-person account of being raped after she was attacked last year. Her story "brought the readers into the bedroom" with her. It proved effective for her, so I thought it could be effective for me. I believe it is.
It was extraordinarily emotional and difficult to meet and interview rape survivors and hear their stories face-to-face. I feared that I would come away from this story with a sense of loss, a feeling that human nature (mostly men's nature) is inherently evil and that there is no hope.