SOUTH Africa’s rape epidemic has turned girls as young as 10 into mothers, and 60 percent of the time the fathers cannot be identified.
The number of girls aged between 10 and 14 years who gave birth between April 2017 and September 2021 increased by 48.7 percent, according to a report by Amnesty International South Africa last week.
Amnesty International South Africa’s executive director, Shenilla Mohamed, said: “It is important to note that these are the number of births, not the number of pregnancies — bearing in mind some pregnancies ended in abortions and miscarriages.”
The organisation said it would run a campaign with True Love to highlight this crisis. Save Our Children health and nutrition programme manager Marumo Sekgobela said they noted a massive spike in child pregnancies in 2020/21 after South Africa went into a hard lockdown for the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sekgobela said at the time there was limited access to health facilities and schools, which usually offered a protective environment for young people. “We also have to look at the issue of gender-based violence (GBV). These children are between 10 and 14, so somewhere, somehow there was a violation and these cases are not always reported.” Sekgobela said they suspected that many of the pregnancies were as a result of rape because at that age children often didn’t even know what had happened to them.
He said in 60 percent of the cases no one knew who had impregnated the girls. “We don’t know if it’s other children, which I doubt, or if it’s older boys and men,” he said. Sekgobela said there was usually a generational gap in terms of relationships in South Africa, where it was not uncommon for 17-year-olds to date 22-year-old adults.
He said given the sharp rise in child and teenage pregnancies during lockdown, it appeared most of the violations happened at home or within their neighbourhoods. Sex with a child below the age of 12 is always regarded as rape, even if they say yes.
And depending on the circumstances and ages, sex involving older teenagers could also be considered statutory rape. Of the 1 764 babies born in South Africa on January 1 this year, 65 were born to adolescent girls, of whom the youngest was 13. Between April 2020 and March 2021, 934 girls between 10 and 14 years old gave birth in Gauteng alone.
In June, Minister of Police Bheki Cele said that 10 818 people had been raped between January and March this year and almost half of the cases had occurred in the homes of the victims or offenders. The director of The Teddy Bear Clinic for Abused Children, Shaheda Omar, said the responsibility of addressing the nation’s early-pregnancy crisis lay in educating young boys and men. “Males simply can’t be out of the equation when it comes to early pregnancies and they must be part of the solution.” Omar said GBV was also a contributing factor.
“Young girls are not fully aware of their rights in a relationship and are not always able to negotiate their rights and responsibilities. “Many often just agree with their partner as a way of seeking approval and submit to their partner’s demands even though they don’t want to.”
She also believed young girls and adolescents were not always capable of making informed decisions and the ripple effect of early pregnancies could be dire. “Many drop out of school, which perpetuates a cycle of poverty and impoverishment,” Omar said. “They suffer from psychological issues like low self-esteem and face stigma and disappointment from their families while feeling like there is no hope for them in their future.” — IOL