South Africa

Maverick Life, South Africa

Analysis: When schoolgirls fall pregnant, why don’t we talk more about rape?

Analysis: When schoolgirls fall pregnant, why don’t we talk more about rape?

The latest news about pregnant South African schoolgirls has landed. On this occasion, 13 of 633 pupils who fell pregnant at Limpopo schools last year were in primary school, with one in Grade 4. Importantly, we don’t know their ages. But while discussions about schoolgirl pregnancy often evoke moral panic about the notion of sexually active young girls, there’s less consideration of those responsible for their impregnation. By REBECCA DAVIS.

Schoolgirl pregnancy is one of those stories that reliably make the news agenda each year. The narrative is often steeped in stigma, which extends beyond the discourse to the way in which pregnant pupils are actually treated. It has been illegal to exclude pregnant learners from school in South Africa since 1996, but there’s some evidence to suggest it still happens. Even when pregnant learners are permitted to stay in schools, there are reports of shaming punitive measures – such as exclusion from a school’s matric dance.

Reintegration of new mothers into the school system once they have given birth carries its own practical challenges: most schools do not make specific provision for childcare, breastfeeding and so on. Policy around mothers in schools is quite complex, as it requires balancing the rights of the baby with the right of the mother to complete her education.

President Jacob Zuma’s comments on teen pregnancy have tended to be stigmatising and unhelpful. He has said in the past, for instance, that “schoolgirls who fall pregnant should be separated from their babies until they have completed schooling”.

In reality, research suggests that only about a third of pregnant pupils return to school following the birth of their child. A 2009 report on the matter for the department of basic education attributed this attrition to stigma, a lack of available childcare, and poor academic performance prior to pregnancy.

The same report noted that although the thrust of interventions about young pregnancy tended to do with sexual risk factors, “non-sexual risk factors such as relational (family structure, gender relations) and structural factors (education, poverty) are critical determinants in South Africa”.

Though pregnancy among young girls tends to be viewed as a social problem for obvious reasons, not all such pregnancies are unplanned, and not all young girls are victims. A paper by Bhana et al from 2008, ‘Pregnant Girls and Young Parents in South African Schools’, makes the point, “[Some girls] are sexual agents and engage in consensual (and coercive) sexual activities with older men”.

The “older men” point is significant, however. A high school principal in KwaZulu-Natal interviewed for the same study about his school’s experience with learner pregnancies said: “Mostly, these kids in our schools are victims of the taxi drivers, working fathers… It is very, very rarely that you would have a school boy who has impregnated a school child… most girls fall vulnerable to the taxi drivers because it’s the taxi drivers that take them to school.”

When statistics about schoolgirl pregnancy are released, they don’t normally contain the ages of pupils – and, particularly in deprived areas, it would be fallacious to think that all pupils in a certain grade are the same age. Nonetheless, it’s hard not to feel alarm – to say the least – when one reads that in 2009, for instance, 109 Grade 3 learners fell pregnant in South Africa. In Grade 3, the average pupil is nine years old.

When those concerning figures were released, the South African Council of Educators’ Tshedi Diphoolo told SABC: “Remember, any child even up to 15 who gets pregnant, it’s statutory rape because they are under-aged. I don’t think teachers are aware of that.”

The law around sexual activity regarding children under the age of 16 in South Africa is actually surprisingly complex. Technically the age of consent is 16, and children under the age of 12 are regarded as never being capable of consenting to sexual activity.

However, the so-called ‘Teddy Bear’ case in 2013 dealt with the question of what should happen when there are two consenting parties younger than the age of consent. The Constitutional Court here ruled that consenting sex between two minors above the age of 12 in the same age range cannot be criminalised – a change likely to come into effect midway through this year.

The Women’s Legal Centre’s Sanja Bornman explained to the Daily Maverick what this will entail. “The situation will be such that a 14 year-old can consent to sex with a 16 year-old (maybe 17 year-old) but not with an 18 year-old. A 12 year-old can have sex with a 14 year-old (or maybe 15 year-old) but not with a 16 year-old. If you are that 16 year-old, and you had sex with a 12 year-old, you have committed statutory rape and your only hope is to allege that the 12 year-old misled you, and you really believed (s)he was older.”

Bornman adds, “Of course an adult – over 18 – cannot have consensual sex with anyone aged 12, 13, 14 or 15. That is statutory rape.”

It seems that the annual discussion of schoolgirl pregnancy in the media, however, is rarely accompanied by a consideration of how many of these girls are legally the victims of rape. Indeed, schoolgirl pregnancy is often framed as a problem of perverse female sexuality, rather than male.

Bhana’s study reports that, “[The South African Schools Act]’s provisions concerning pregnancy and parenthood are generally understood as referring exclusively to mothers. Fathers… are seldom identified and treated as a ‘problem’ or an ‘inconvenience’ in the ways that pregnant girls and young mothers are.”

When Grade 4 pupils are falling pregnant, you’d think authorities would be asking some difficult questions as to how. In The Star article this week reporting on the Limpopo school pregnancies, however, acting department head Martin Mashaba was quizzed on the matter.

The article ran: Mashaba said the department did not have information to verify who had impregnated the pupils. No police case was opened.

No cases were reported by the schools as we did not have any indication that this took place at the school premises,” he said.

The idea that a suspected rape would have to take place “at the school premises” in order for the school to report it is deeply erroneous.

Bornman says that the Sexual Offences Act is clear on the matter. “A person who has knowledge that a sexual offence has been committed against a child must report such knowledge immediately to a police official. A person who fails to report such knowledge as contemplated in paragraph (a), is guilty of an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding five years or to both a fine and such imprisonment. A person who in good faith reports such reasonable belief or suspicion shall not be liable to any civil or criminal proceedings by reason of making such report.”

This was reiterated by department of basic education spokesperson Troy Martens, when contacted by the Daily Maverick for comment on Thursday.

The point we need to make to the general public and teachers and education officials is that the context is not relevant,” Martens said. “Even if the rape occurred outside the school premises, it has to be reported.”

If Mashaba’s comments are taken as representative of a wider view, this message is clearly not getting through.

The Limpopo schoolgirl pregnancy figures aren’t even particularly remarkable – in the Western Cape, provincial education spokesperson Jessica Shelver told the Daily Maverick, schools reported 2852 learner pregnancies in 2014.

It’s worth making the point again: not all schoolgirl pregnancies are unplanned, and not all pregnant schoolgirls are the victims of rape. In situations where hundreds of primary school pupils may be falling pregnant each year, however, it’s worth questioning why rape seems so curiously absent from the discussion. DM

Photo: Children’s dolls lie on a bed at a pre-school in Cape Town’s Khayelitsha township February 17, 2010. REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly

Read more:

  • Grade 4 girl among pregnant pupils in Limpopo, on IOL

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