DA YOUTH’S LESBIAN ‘CORRECTIVE RAPE’ POSTER

The DA Student Organisation (DASO) and the DA Youth have released the final poster in their controversial ‘In our future’ campaign series, this time depicting a lesbian couple to highlight the scourge of corrective rape.

The poster features prominent LGBTI rights activist Ndumie Funda and her partner, with the tagline ‘In our future they will be free to love without fear’.

“The poster is designed to highlight both her and many thousands of openly lesbian women’s struggle to simply live their daily lives without fear of victimisation,” commented the DA Youth.

Funda founded the NGO Luleki Sizwe – which lobbies against the rape and murder of lesbian women because of their sexual orientation – in 2007 after her fiancée was a victim of ‘corrective rape’.

According to the group, more than 10 lesbians are subjected to ‘corrective rape’ every week in Cape Town alone, with over 510 cases of corrective rape reported every year. Over the last ten years 31 lesbians have allegedly been murdered because of their sexuality.

At present, the South African legal system does not recognise hate crimes attacks, or any violence committed on the basis of sexual orientation. Rather, these crimes are dealt with in terms of the existing legislation and common law in the criminal courts.

“As well as highlighting this serious issue, the poster also makes a statement about the kind of future that the DA Youth envisages for South Africa, namely one in which there is tolerance and acceptance of every individual, even if their life choices are different from our own,” said the DA Youth.

“The DA Youth supports campaigns to ensure that individuals perpetrating crimes of this nature are handed down aggravated sentences that take cognisance not only of the violent act itself, but also of the motive, which is based on unacceptable discrimination on the basis of the social group the victim belongs to, whether that group be defined by sexual orientation, race, religion, ethnicity or any other constitutional determiner.”

Lance Weyer, Mr. Gay South Africa 2011 and a DA Councillor in the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality, welcomed the poster, saying: ” I think it makes a strong statement!”

The poster is the sixth in a series that made headlines around the country. The most controversial version featured the image of a white man embracing a topless black woman, with the by-line “in OUR future, you wouldn’t look twice”.

That poster caused a furore earlier this year, with critics accusing it of being inappropriate and the African Christian Democratic Party accusing it of “promoting sexual immorality”.

A follow-up unofficial gay parody version showing a black man and a white man embracing was welcomed by the DA Youth at the time.