Johannesburg, Aug 8 (IANS) A “Bollywood slut list” circulating on the MXit cellphone chat service in South Africa, listing local Indian girls described as “easy and willing”, has caused great alarm here, even prompting a suicide attempt. In recent weeks, there has been growing concern over similar lists being spread by teens and schoolchildren all over the country, but the one called a “Bollywood list” names South African Indian girls in cities north of here.
The list says girls from Benoni are “the sexiest in the country”, modelling themselves on Bollywood actresses.
One list on Bakerton, a mainly Indian township, describes the girls from there as “the ugliest bitches”.
The lists allegedly also name some school girls who have had repeated abortions and indulge in promiscuous behaviour with men old enough to be their father.
MXit is a hugely popular mobile chat service among teens because it costs a fraction per message to other alternatives.
Growing reports indicate that children at school are being harassed by their friends. In one case, a suicide attempt by a girl in Durban was reported after her parents were very upset on seeing her name on a list.
Linda Naidoo, a director of the NGO Childline, which promotes the protection of children against criminal activities, has called on parents to urgently intervene as the distribution of such lists grows daily.
Naidoo said the problem was exacerbated by the fact that the hugely popular internet social networking site Facebook was now also available on mobile phones, making it even more readily available to children.
“Parents need to place controls on their children’s use of technology and know what their children are getting up to,” Naidoo said, adding that the creators and distributors of such lists needed to be punished.
The director of MXit, Herman Heunis, appealed to those with information on the perpetrators to lay criminal charges with the police and report them to MXit.
“At any given moment, millions of messages from MXit’s 7.5 million users are in circulation, making it very difficult to trace the lists and remove them,” Heunis said, adding that his company was doing its best to remove the offending lists from its database.
