It’s common knowledge that South Africa has a disturbingly high rate of domestic violence where women are disproportionately the victims. Put another way, one in two South African women are victims of abuse. It’s so bad that domestic violence is one of the things I associate with South Africa, so it was an incredible feeling stumbling on a video of women in South Africa singing against abuse and domestic violence in a live football game.
The campaign video is an initiative of beer brand Carling Black Label, hashtagged #NoExcuse with an all-female choir changing the lyrics to the popular South African football song Asambe Nono, which suggestively has lyrics like, ”Let’s go my baby, let’s go and sleep.”
It’s not a new video, though, and my research shows that the football game was a PSL match between Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates on March 3, 2018. PSL is the Premier Soccer League in South Africa, in case you are wondering. As the woman sang, the lyrics tell the all-too-common story of a South African woman being abused by her partner when he comes home under the influence from a football match which his team has lost, with the chorus pointedly saying there is no excuse for women to be abused.
This is commendable, in that the campaign was effective in spreading its message to its target audience – men. In Nigeria, women are no longer safe, from endless cases of domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment to illegal nightclub raids where women were picked up to the invasion of the women’s-only healthcare facility Marie Stopes. Interestingly, I can’t remember if there has been any brand-supported campaign video to speak against domestic violence in Nigeria. Anyway, I’ll be waiting.
When Bernard Dayo isn’t writing about pop culture, he’s watching horror movies and reading comics and trying to pretend his addiction to Netflix isn’t a serious condition.
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