Teenage pregnancy: Call for urgent justice-centred intervention

A response to the growing teenage pregnancy crisis should be multifaceted, but there is a need to drive an urgent justice-centred intervention as sexual crimes have taken place against children.

This is according to Build One SA (Bosa) deputy leader Nobuntu Hlazo-Webster, who called for an urgent report on the prosecution rate for statutory rape over five years.

Her sentiments follow a report by the Free State health department which revealed that about 150 girls aged 10 to 14 had given birth over the past five months in the province.

“This is an alarming figure, but it is no less alarming than the Gauteng department of health’s August 2021 report about 23,000 teenage pregnancies in that year. That these figures do not spark nationwide outrage is indicative of the tolerance South Africans have built against statutory rape of young girls,” she said.

Hlazo-Webster said it is a burgeoning crisis which has health and socioeconomic implications, and negative effects on the education of girl children in particular.

“But most importantly, many of these pregnancies are consequences of sexual crimes, rape and statutory rape which routinely go unpunished. Girls are being violated every day. The perpetrators are often trusted figures in these young girls’ lives.”

She said when children fall pregnant, it is a gross violation and an injustice.

No self-respecting society should normalise such events, she said. “Nor should any society claim to live the values of ubuntu while blaming children for actions initiated by predators.

“The quality of any society is reflected by the safety and security of its most vulnerable members.”

Hlazo-Webster said her party proposed these solutions:

• There must be prosecutions. In communities where ubuntu is revived, perpetrators will be exposed.
• Education about consent must be delivered in communities, especially rural communities with the highest teenage pregnancy numbers.
• Healthcare must be accessible and democratised for rural girls.
• The laws on sexual consent must be changed to better protect children. Power dynamics exist even between children of different ages, and this must be accounted for.
• A collaborative response policy approach is needed from the departments of health, education, social development and police to determine what interventions have been put in place by any of these departments in response to the crisis, which has been growing over the past five years.

She said they would approach police minister Bheki Cele to request a comprehensive update on the state of arrests and prosecutions of those accused of statutory rape over the past five years.

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