As South Africa's former number two Jacob Zuma braces for a verdict in a sensational rape case, the major scourge bedevilling the country is being highlighted in a hard-hitting TV commercial.
The 64-year-old former deputy president, once tipped to succeed President Thabo Mbeki, may well see his political career screech to a grinding halt if a guilty verdict is handed down on May 8.
As the trial was unfolding, South African television scored a first with an actress recounting her real life rape ordeals in a television commercial, which coincidentally ran at the same time as the real-life court drama.
Tinah Mnumzane says that while loading a revolver with bullets: "I was raped for the first time when I was eight. I survived. I was raped again when I was 10. I survived. I was raped when I was 25, 30, 32."
"And even when I was raped for the sixth time, I survived. The thing that almost killed me was not my rapist, it was you, my relatives, friends, neighbors, that pretended not to have known anything. I wanted to kill you. By not doing so, I saved myself."
She signs off saying: "Two-thousand-eight-hundred women will be raped today. Help them survive. Give them support".
According to police records, some 55,000 rape cases were recorded in 2005. Rape crisis organizations say that only one in nine rapes are reported to the police.
Sheilla Kubheka, the director of the commercial, defends its in-your-face approach, saying that South Africans had to be jolted into reality to confront one of the world's highest incidences of rape.
"You can't beat around the bush about this," she said. "You have to be straightforward. That's the only way ... That's what we need in this country."
The spot is aired on private television channels such as eTV and MNet, and Kevin Aspoas from the Jupiter Drawing Room agency, which supervised the making of the spot, said that it would be shown on the public broadcaster SABC soon.
"In isolation, the anti-rape TV commercial is not important. But if it can be a catalyst, then it actually serves the purpose. That's why we, unashamedly, use quite provocative stories," he said.
The current commercial is the third in a series of anti-rape messages, launched in 1999 that provoked debate.
In an earlier commercial, Oscar-winning South African actress Charlize Theron lashes out at the stereotype of the hard-living, outdoorsy South African men.
"People often ask me what the men are like in South Africa. Well, if you consider that more women are raped in South Africa than in any country in the world ... It's not that easy to say what the men in South Africa are like, because there would seem to be so few of them out there," she says.
The Theron advertisement drew a range of reactions from bouquets to brickbats. But after widespread complaints that it was an unfair condemnation of South African manhood, the advertising watchdog ordered its withdrawal but later allowed the ad to be aired again.
Chantel Cooper, head of the Rape Crisis organization and one of the main brains behind the TV commercials, said that it was important to shock people out of their apathy.
"Rape happens so often, you see it so often in the papers, it has almost become a norm ... people become used to hearing about rape."
TV ad tackles rape as S. African trial heads for verdict
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