A bleep for every rape in South Africa

Radio stations in South Africa’s Primedia group are playing bleeps over their output every four minutes throughout Friday.

Their campaign follows a recent case in which a woman died after she was brutally raped near Cape Town and the recurring bleeps signify the frequency of rapes committed in South Africa.

All Primedia’s stations in Johannesburg and Cape Town are running a bleep for every rape from 6am until 6pm.

This means listeners to music stations 94.7 Highveld Stereo and 94.5 KFM are hearing their favourite music overlayed with the bleeps while speech format stations Talk Radio 702 and Cape Talk 567 additionally emphasise the issue of rape in their discussion programmes through the day.

Hear how it sounds

In this seven minute aircheck from Highveld Stereo, you’ll hear two bleeps, one in the middle of an ad break, the other over a song, plus a personal testimony drop into the break and an Eyewitness News bulletin which leads on the criminal and political response to the rape death in the Western Cape.

[audio:http://earshotcreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/highveldstereo.mp3|titles=”Highveld Stereo rape campaign 11am sequence”]

The Indepdendent Media newspaper company in South Africa is also supporting the campaign under a cross-media social action partnership called LeadSA.