This Girl Whisperer Article was meant to be published in The Sunday Guardian of November the 11th. Alas, workers at the newspaper went on strike and so did my blog even though I am not an employee of the Guardian. So Prousette, here's the article even though it's not published yet.

Big Brother, Big Blunder

The entire continent watched as the remaining inhabitants of the Big Brother House, the Angolan, Tatiana; her lover, Richard Bezuidenhout; and the Nigerian female, Ofunneka Molokwu, drank themselves to a near-stupor with alcohol freely supplied by the producers of the programme. The rationale behind this, in retrospect must have been the loss of inhibitions by the three remaining housemates. The plan worked to horrifying perfection.

As Ofunneka, the Nigerian medical assistant lay comatose from drink, the Tanzanian, Richard, in full view of the cameras spewing live footage into millions of homes appeared to use his fingers to penetrate the most private part of Ofunneka’s anatomy. And a new dimension was added to African television. No matter how much we claim to be liberal on this continent now, it is not a very African thing to grope a non-consenting female, as she lies asleep. A female housemate tried to stop Richard from ravaging Ofunneka, but the deed was already done. After a while, the good-looking dread-locked Richard, who appears to be short on intelligence even at the best of times moved away from Ofunneka, sniffing his fingers as he did so.

According to Joseph Hundah, an executive at M-Net, the Television company in airing the programme, "There is no indication that Ofunneka was unconscious at the time." These spin-doctors chose to control damage by insinuating that Ofunneka, who vomited from excessive alcohol intake before apparently losing consciousness, consented to Richard’s act.

The Girl Whisperer studied law, and can state some things on this matter. The first is that Richard performed the most essential element of rape under criminal law. Penetration. It would not have mattered if he had used a coca-cola bottle or pencil for his act.

In search of conspiracy theories, I already had issues with the terrible photo of Ofunneka showing her with almost mongoloid features. Then, the producers of the programme played out the ultimate conspiracy. They denied anything untoward took place, even though they had locked Richard away in the diary room immediately they noticed matters had gotten out of hand and sent in paramedics. They had also cleaned up sms messages scrolled on the programme, none indicating the ensuing outcry that followed Richard’s act.

There are many things to look into. A scandal rocked British Television a few weeks back when it was discovered that one of their four biggest stations, ITV, had manipulated the use of premium phone lines. Voting had been rigged numerous times on phone-in programmes, votes were not counted in some cases and people were allowed to enter phone-in competitions they had no chance of winning. It would be a good idea to look closely at the African penchant to use the same medium that has been proven liable to be falsified, in terrestrial and cable programming.

Ofunneka will come out of the Big Brother House to meet the outside world and have to live the rest of her life as the butt of crude conversation and gutter jokes. She, however, has a remedy in law against the producers of the programme if rape can be proven.
This is a criminal issue and the Big Brother producers should be held liable, as should the perpetrator, Richard the Dull.

Her dreams, if any, of making it big in the world of television and films have been brought to a crashing halt by several misplaced fingers. The public is an unforgiving one and even if a rape occurs every forty seconds in South Africa, land of the African Big Brother, it is not an occurrence that is as usual here. If this act had occurred in the Big Brother House in the United Kingdom, the British government would almost certainly have gotten involved and pressurised the end of the programme. Last year, a case of bullying and racism marred the Big Brother production in that country and the government intervened. Ours, watches and waits, because it is unfamiliar territory.

Ofunneka was forcibly retired from her dreams the moment Richard committed his act. She walks around the house still, not knowing, not realizing that for her in many ways, the game is over, permanently and their might be no coming back from the mindless act of the brain-dead Richard. It would be a wise thing for her to start her pension plans by meeting her family lawyers to ensure the producers pay for an incident that will haunt her until the day she dies.