Andy DehnartA man who was accused of sexually assaulting a fellow houseguest on Big Brother Africa 2 won the show’s prize, and the woman he allegedly assaulted came in second. Richard Bezuidenhout from Tanzania placed first, while Nigerian Ofunneka Molokwu placed second.
Late last month, married houseguest “Bezuidenhout lay down next to the comatose young woman [Molokwu] and penetrated her vagina with his fingers. He carried on despite the pleas of another female housemate for him stop. Under the law in South Africa — where, on average, a woman is sexually assaulted every 40 seconds — such an act constitutes rape,” The First Post reported at the time. Eventually, “the producers of the show did intervene, sending paramedics into the house and cutting the live feed. Bezuindehout, defending his sexual behaviour in a show that has featured copious nudity, recently told his housemates, ‘Well, this is Africa.'”
The network denied those events, even though they were broadcast live. A spokesperson for South African broadcaster M-Net said, “There is no indication that she was unconscious at the time.”
The First Post reviewed footage and reports today that Richard “seemed to be touching her private parts, and she seemed to be responding. She thrust her hips up and towards him, gripping his hand between her thighs. … The whole incident, rated suitable for 16-year-olds by the channel’s censor, was filmed by a camera positioned so low that it looked right up between Ofunneka’s thighs. … Molokwu has said on air that she has no recall of the events of that drunken afternoon — but that was before the series came to an end on Sunday, when she had yet to learn of the public outrage or see the incident from the perspective of the viewer. The big question is whether she was conscious of what was happening to her – and the footage I was shown suggests she was.”
The video also showed “the housemates get plastered, fall over in a drunken heap, sob uncontrollably, and vomit — well, the women, at least. Meanwhile, Bezuidenhout, a married man, unbuttoned his trousers, boasted about his ‘machinegun’ and taunted the female housemates with a pledge to ‘bump’ them all.” Previously, he had sex with a different female housemate.