Pretoria – The Department of Women, Youth, and Persons with Disabilities has urged South Africans to report men who impregnate underage girls to the police for “statutory rape”.
South Africa has the highest rates of teenage pregnancy globally, with nearly one in four girls falling pregnant before the age of 20 years, the department revealed in a statement on Saturday.
“South Africa has recorded an estimated 150 000 girls between the age group of 10 and 19 years old falling pregnant in the 2022/2023 financial year,” the statement said.
“What’s particularly disheartening is that individuals who became parents during this period were hardly teenagers, with some cases reported constituting to statutory rape.”
The department said the phenomenon of teenage pregnancy has devastating social and economic costs.
“Early pregnancy in South Africa forces many girls to drop out of school and trap others in a cycle of poverty and leaves most stigmatised by society for being teenage mothers or forced into early marriages,” said Women, Youth, and Persons with Disabilities Minister Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.
The minister urged the public and private sector stakeholders to act against those who impregnate teenage girls by reporting them to law enforcement authorities.
She said this was the first step towards ending teenage pregnancy.
Providing psycho-social support was also particularly important.
The department said the prevention of teenage pregnancies would, among others, contribute to the promotion and protection of the rights of the girl child.
“There is a need for coordination and redirecting of efforts to the hardest hit areas,” the department said.
“With a specific focus 1 towards prevention, early intervention and impactful evidence-based programmatic interventions.”
The department has developed a Program of Action (POA) aimed at tackling teenage pregnancy, which involves implementing a Comprehensive National Gender-Based Violence Prevention Strategy.
This includes outreach programmes focusing on young mothers.
Working with stakeholders, the department said it has put together tailor-made programmes focused on the prevention of teenage pregnancy, such as Ezabasha Dialogues and Risiha-Community Based Prevention, and social behavioural change programs such as ChommY (10-14 years), and YOLO, You Only Live Once (15-24 years).
Minister Dlamini Zuma said: “Government calls on families, communities, religious and traditional leaders to support the Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) of teenagers to prevent unintended/unwanted pregnancies”.
