Founded following the tragic death of Uyinene Mrwetyana in 2019, the organization Keep the Energy has expressed its utter dismay at a rape joke made on the reality TV show by contestant Millie Terblanche.
Taking to Facebook the NPO, which has nearly 100 000 followers, said, “Many of our followers have raised concern about a rape joke made on a recent episode of @loveislandsa and we feel we should address it.”
The post then goes on to describe what happened: “To add some context to the clip, the woman on the right, named Millie (@millieterblanche), was talking to another islander named Tania. They spoke about Tania’s current relationship with islander Ross and how he would prefer to save himself for marriage. They laughed and Millie is seen to say “rape him” as a response. The episode now has been edited so that this clip is not included anymore, after Twitter users called Millie and Love Island SA out for the rape joke and for including it in the episode.”
M-Net has since responded to the outcry on social media by releasing a statement that reads as follows :
“M-Net is aware of the comments by one of Love Island SA’s contestants. M-Net is a strong proponent of a violence-free South Africa and abhors any form of gender-based violence.
“While we note that the contestant referred to the matter in jest, we strongly condemn the trivializing of such grave matters and apologize to our viewers and stakeholders for exposing them to such.
“We have reprimanded the contestant and implemented sensitivity training for the whole cast and crew.
“All contestants are being supported by a qualified psychologist. We have also removed the offensive language from all repeat broadcasts of the program.”
Keep the energy closed their post by saying,” This (post) does not intend to incite bullying and hate towards Millie or Love Island SA, but no matter if you're male or female, rape jokes are not funny and they contribute to rape culture. Joking about rape and sexual assault assists in normalizing these offenses. A rape joke is a far cry from an actual incident of sexual assault but think of the rape jokes as the foundation of the pyramid of rape culture. If you take away the foundation — if you create a situation where rape jokes are unacceptable, instead of a situation where victims feel forced to bite their tongues and bear it — then everything else will be a little bit less likely to take root and flourish.
We call on Love Island SA and Camille Terreblance to apologize for this.”
On Twitter, they posted the clip with the caption, “ Rape jokes are never funny.”
Rape jokes are never funny#LoveIslandSA #millie #KeepTheEnergy pic.twitter.com/rOTzwTh1So
— KEEP THE ENERGY (@KEEPTHEENERGY1) April 6, 2021
