On 21 February Special Assignment focuses on the national outrage following the brutal rape and subsequent death of 17-year-old Anene Booysen. The programme asks whether this incident will be the turning point in South Africa’s war on rape.
The bloody attack on Booysen occurred in the small town of Bredasdorp in the Western Cape earlier this month and has unleashed public anger from many sectors throughout the country and abroad including Navi Pillay, United Nations’ Human Rights Chief and from the Ministry of Women, Children and People with Disabilities.
Booysen’s gang rape and disembowelment on a deserted construction site was said to be so severe that police and hospital staff linked to the case had to receive counselling. Protests and anti-rape campaigns by the media, government and gender activist organisations soon followed.
Booysen has seemingly become the poster child for the hundreds of thousands of rape survivors in a country that is now saying: enough is enough. However, with one of the highest rape statistics in the world, critics are asking if this will jolt an otherwise seemingly desensitised nation into action as incidents of rape continue unabated.
War on Rape is produced by Adel van Niekerk and airs on Thursday 21 February at 21h00 on SABC3.
