ETV: Scandal Ep 3185- 04/12/2018


Date: December 4, 2018
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Name of monitor: Petronell Ngonyama

Name of Television station: ETV

Name of programme: Scandal

Date of broadcast: 04 December 2018

Time: 19:30

Genre: Drama Series

Theme: Crime, Social

GBV focus explicit or implicit: Implicit

Gem Classification: Gender Aware

Link: Artefact

Description:
The scene displays a young woman who is a victim and survivor of Human Trafficking. The woman is now in custody of the police yet she faces intimidation from the culprit. The scene illustrates how people who commit crimes control survivors by threatening their lives. This makes it easy for the perpetrators to continue in their cycle of abuse. This scene also gives shows the control of the perpetrators as their actions have made the young woman uneasy about working abroad. As economic conditions force women to seek greener pastures, their vulnerability makes it easier for human traffickers to prey on them.

Context
The incident forms part of a chain of events around businessmen and profiting off human trafficking.

Why it has been given this GEM classification:

The scene is Gender Aware. Scandal shows that human trafficking is a legitimate problem that disproportionately targets women and children who are subject to abuse and sexual violence in the process. The act of taking women without their consent is a crime itself because it is kidnapping. This scene raises awareness of this human rights violation which is not being given enough attention in the media.

Title:
In the introduction of the topic we find a man who wants to take revenge and get himself the position that he desires, the act of him reporting the case was not because he wanted to help the girls, but for his own benefit. He wanted to expose the culprit so that he could gain power not because he wanted to help them, which is not a fair approach.

Focus:

There is a focus on GBV in the scene. The scene looks at what is currently happening worldwide where women are constantly being kidnapped, raped and abused. The scene clearly indicates that those who are likely to be victims of human trafficking are women and girls, particularly immigrants due to intersecting factors such as xenophobia, poverty and race.

People in the scene:
In the scene, we find a young woman who is in the supervision of the police and being questioned by a male policeman.

Visuals
The scene displays the victim as a fragile and afraid as when she is told to identify the culprit she points at the wrong person in fear of her life due to intimidation. The young lady was taken to safekeeping by the police, yet she was still afraid of what the people who kidnapped her might do if she speaks out.

Angles and perspective
The scene sources experts are only males, which are police officers including males who are suspects and one female as a witness; it does not show neutrality because it dominated by male viewpoints only. There were a lot of girls involved and they could have taken any two of them in for questioning to balance their perspectives.

Intersectionality
In this scene girls have been kidnapped because of economic conditions that forced them to seek employment only to find out that what they are promised is not what they get. In terms of ethnicity people are being forcefully taken from their homes, the girls, which, were human trafficked many of them are immigrants. The show highlights that immigrants are disproportionately targeted in human trafficking.

Conclusion:

The Scene should have got more than one witness, and female police officers to balance the voice of women in this matter because they are the ones who are constantly being targeted and women could perhaps provide a safer environment in the face of the girls’ trauma. The writer and the directors should have expanded the story to give it more depth and explore the issue fully. The story line was very short and it lacked in-depth of what human trafficking is, this would have brought a lot of insight to women about the decision they make some of course they do it unwillingly.

 


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