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| With KwaZulu-Natal still parading its girls to the princes, much like cows are paraded at cattle actions, should we wonder why the high rate of teen pregnancies? |
I was hoping to write something fun for the new year, starting with how I went to
donate blood earlier this week and the system showed my blood to be type A, but
it was a typo.
Instead my blood is boiling when I think what a
cruel, uncaring village we have allowed ourselves to become.
We all know it takes a village to raise a child,
right? So at what point did we as a village start to think it is okay that at
least 25 babies are born to teenage girls in KwaZulu-Natal schools every day of
the year?
You read it right: 25. This number is, unfortunately, no typo.
KwaZulu-Natal’s MEC for Education, Mthandeni Ndlungwane,
told the Legislature in October that 9 135 pupils, or 25 girls for each day of
the year, were reported to be pregnant in KwaZulu-Natal schools in 2015. And if
what the gogos who end up holding these babies told me is even partly true,
at least 1 370 of these children, or 15% of our future, were made solely to get the government grants of R350 per month per child.
at least 1 370 of these children, or 15% of our future, were made solely to get the government grants of R350 per month per child.
In researching this column, I spoke to gogos in
Swaimane who blamed the teenage girls for “chasing the boys” so that they can
get pregnant.
I also heard of girls in Bushbuckridge who blame
the gogos for encouraging the girls to get pregnant for the foster care grant of
R890 per month.
Whatever the truth behind these claims, the fact
remains when these babies grow up, and often long before then, we as a village
not only throw the naïve young girls at older men, but glamorise those men as
“blessers”.
I hang my head in shame to live in a society
where our elders allow this.
The saddest are the newborn babies who are
quietly killed by their indigent young mothers.
These babies, note, are not counted among the 25
babies born a day in KZN, or among the many more who are aborted. Instead, these
dumped babies were carried in secret and dumped as soon as the umbilical cord
could be cut.
As The
Witness often reports, a lucky few are rescued from pit latrines or dust
bins, or, in the well-publicised case last year, left in a taxi with a desperate
note from the mother for someone please to take care of the child.
What makes the taxi case worse is that the
mother was arrested. As A.C.Q. Valentine thundered in a letter to The Witness, “find the man who made her
pregnant and arrest him”.
Unfortunately, arresting the sperm donors will
not solve anything.
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| KZN's society is still governed by the iron age age norms. |
For in KZN, we are still governed by the same
Iron Age norms as when the legendary Nodumehlezi was first disowned by his
father and later chased away, along with his mother.
For those who learn nothing from history,
Nodumehlezi’s nickname was Shaka, a name he hated because it referred to ishaka, a beetle initially blamed for
causing his unmarried mother’s “intestinal bloat”, when her stomach was in
reality swelling with the warlord founder of the Zulu nation.
The good news for us as a village is that there
are two ways to slow the tide of unwanted and unloved babies so that each of our
children can have an education and a job when they grow up.
First, offer a reward to girls who finish matric
without a baby. Such a reward should ideally be sponsored training towards a
trade with accommodation in a young women’s hostel, preferably far from home.
For education is the best form of birth control and nothing educates as fast as
a bit of travel and the opportunity to aspire.
Second, stop glamorising the sperm donors — those
blessers and absent fathers who make babies without ever being able to pay papgeld, never mind act as father to the
child. Praise, instead, the many good dads among us for being the heroes they
are for raising their children.
There is a also third way, unfortunately still
far away on the horizon, which is to give men the choice of being fathers, or
not, through a reversible vasectomy called Vasal Gel.
This quick and relatively painless injection
creates a filter comprising large molecules in the vas deferens that stops sperm
while allowing semen through. When a young man meets the woman of his dreams,
with whom he wants to start a family — be it months or years later — a cheap
second injection dissolves the filter. Vasal Gel has now proven effective for a
year in animal testing, but the costly human trials are still to be done. I am,
however, encouraged by a few responsible young men in KZN who tell me they will
get this injection as soon as it is available.
This inspires me to dream of a KZN in which
every baby is wanted, educated and employed, with a father who is there for his
children and partner.
The means exist to bring about such a society.
All that is wanting is for us as a village to care enough.
* First published on 5 Jan 2017 in The Witness (est 1846).
