Actress Charlize Theron decided to use her notoriety for flood victims in South Africa. On Tuesday April 19, on Instagram and Twitter, she posted not one of her usual self-portraits of a glamorous actress, but photos of the damage caused by the mudslides in the KwaZulu-Natal region, near Durban: transformed houses in wooden mikado, washed away roads, devastated villages.
“My native land is going through an extremely difficult ordeal, I know that the world is particularly suffering at the moment, and that the citizens of the world are already being asked a lot, but last week record floods hit the province of Durban, killing 450 people , displacing thousands more (…) and these families desperately need water, food and shelter.”
The actress adds that she, with her foundation, has created a fund specially and solely intended for local associations, a way of reassuring those who hesitate to donate for fear of seeing their money embezzled by corrupt leaders.
Charlize Theron, 46, has planned everything, she knows the situation, she was born and raised in South Africa. Before becoming the heroine of Mad Max: Fury Road and Dior perfume ads, she was the daughter of construction worker parents who set up their road construction and earthmoving business. The decor of his childhood is a ballet of construction machinery, diggers, backhoes and bulldozers in the South African countryside. The drama that is affecting the country and the reconstruction work that awaits it therefore speaks to it in more ways than one.
Knowing that she is not a last-minute employee, far from it. Between two film sets, she has always been committed, for the prevention against AIDS, against intra-family violence, violence of which she was a victim as a child, and since 2008 she is also a United Nations messenger of peace, so many things you don’t see on the red carpet.
And it is perhaps precisely because we did not expect it that the call had an effect: in a few hours, Charlize Theron’s message was broadcast by tens of thousands of fans, donations poured in. And she managed to put before our eyes the reality that is playing out there.