By Emily Richardson | Celebrity | November 2, 2023 |
By Emily Richardson | Celebrity | November 2, 2023 |
Charlize Theron covers the 2023 philanthropy issue of Town & Country. In the interview, the 48-year-old actress discusses the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project, which she founded in 2007. Initially, CTAOP focused on teaching young people about HIV prevention. Over the years, they expanded their focus to include general health, education, vaccine equity, and gender-based violence.
CTAOP’s model is to put the money they raise directly into the hands of local community-based programs. These program partners include women’s shelters, HIV clinics, youth programs, and medical training institutes across South Africa, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2020, CTAOP’s partners informed the organization that violence against women had drastically escalated during the COVID lockdowns:
“People were being asked to stay at home with their abusers,” Theron says. “There was a femicide happening in South Africa, and nobody was really talking about it.”
The CTAOP team co-launched #TogetherForHer, an initiative to combat pandemic violence. The issue is personal for Charlize, who was a victim of gender-based violence as a teenager growing up in Benoni, South Africa. In 1991, Charlize’s father, Charles Theron, came home “so drunk that he shouldn’t have been able to walk”. He was also armed with a gun. In a 2019 interview with NPR, Charlize details what happened next:
“My mom and I were in my bedroom leaning against the door, because he was trying to push through the door. So both of us were leaning against the door from the inside to have him not be able to push through. He took a step back and just shot through the door three times. None of those bullets ever hit us, which is just a miracle.”
Charlize’s mother, Gerda Maritz, retrieved her own handgun, shot back in self-defense, and killed her husband. She faced no charges. Town & Country asked Charlize if this incident “spurred her commitment to combating violence against women.” Here’s her response:
“I would say this: It’s a simple correlation to make,” she says. “But I think it’s way more complicated than having just one night of trauma in your life. With or without that, gender-based violence is so in your face in South Africa and globally. It’s hard to not be aware of these things just purely by being a woman.”
Charlize says the greater trauma was “was growing up in a country under apartheid and having AIDS come. Those things really, really marked me — I almost want to say more than just that one night in my life.”
According to Charlize, anyone “can throw a fundraiser,” but she wants to work with people willing to make long-term investments in her organization and its partners in Africa. Here’s Charlize’s cover and photoshoot for Town & Country: