- Title: SOUTH AFRICA: ANTI-PORNOGRAPHY PROTEST
- Date: 16th January 1998
- Summary: CLOSE OF VIDEO COVERS
- Embargoed: 31st January 1998 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA
- Country: South Africa
- Topics: Business,Entertainment,Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA14TIYCRJ97O5GBKK6OR3R3CI3
- Story Text: South Africans, subject to strict controls on sexual matters under the apartheid regime, have been protesting against the opening of what the owners claim is the continent's biggest wholesale sex shop.
Dozens of angry demonstrators crowded around United States porn actress, Christie Lake, to decry the opening of "Adult World", South Africa's newest and biggest porn shop on Friday (January 16).
Lake was in the country to assist with the store's promotion.
Lake happily admitted that she was one of the reasons the protestors were at the store, "I'm the adult actress that they're all protesting," she said, adding, "My view is I like what I do...
I'm not ashamed of it. Obviously people want it because a store wouldn't be opened if it was not wanted." In spite of "Adult World" being deliberately located on an industrial estate on the outskirts of Cape Town so it is not easily accessible to children, the demonstrators still felt the shop would be a bad influence on the area.
"This is evil and we don't want it... it's a doorway to other evils," said Tom Klein, one of the protesters.
But Con Bletsas, the store's Australian co-owner, said plenty of South Africans were keen to buy his products.
"If we weren't selling our product then we'd be closing our store. Obviously there's a demand. People want it and they want more of it," Bletsas said inside his warehouse, stocked with rows of sex toys, blow-up dolls, magazines and lubricants.
However the store has caused much consternation amongst South Africa's more conservative religious communities.
Andrie Kilian a pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church said that the introduction of pornography would "promote promiscuity and promote permissiveness", ultimately undermining the principals of the Bible.
White-ruled South Africa was one of the world's most conservative states, banning sex between the races, the publication of bare breasts and confining gambling to the nominally independent black homelands.
Post-apartheid South Africa is still a deeply religious country, but pornography became widely available after all-race elections in 1994 and the constitution was rewritten in 1996 to guarantee freedom of expression. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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