South Africa faces a multitude of interconnected challenges related to sexuality, ranging from teenage pregnancies and the sexualization of society to the rights and experiences of the LGBTQ+ community and the pervasive issue of transactional sex. These issues demand urgent attention and strategic engagement to safeguard the well-being of its citizens, particularly the youth.
Numbers released by Statistics South Africa in 2018 revealed a concerning statistic: over 3,000 girls aged between 10 and 14 became mothers or registered the births of their children in South Africa the previous year. This shocking information underscores the vulnerability of young girls and the urgent need for comprehensive sexual education and support systems.
The Sexualization of Society
South Africa has grown to become a highly sexualized society, like many other western and European countries, unfortunately, and this is not good for a nation that is highly youthful in the number of its population, and still very young in its democratic formation, and the process of integrated sociocultural ideology. Sexualizing a society is a powerful means of not just stealing or destroying just the identity AND FUTURE of a society, it’s also a powerful method of owning and enslaving the people. When you give a careful thought to what I’ve just said, it will undoubtedly prove why the issue of the 21ST-century slavery trade is the second largest trade in the world; abuse of women, girl-child, and the sodomizing of teenage boys is on the increase even within the walls of the Church.
The question, however, is, what is driving South Africa, particularly, the millennial generation, as a society that is becoming extremely sexualized? It is a natural, non-truth that humans by default, experiment and utilize sex for different purposes beyond the act of seeking pleasure. Sex can be used as a weapon to win dominance, influence, position, authority and power. Meaning that almost everything within the daily, operative social system of human’s is one that gravitates towards the promotion and idolization of sex as a communicative, advertising tool.
There’s no doubt that we are seated with a major social crisis time bomb in South Africa than we admit, and it will take an open acknowledgment of this, in humility to begin to find the right solution so we can salvage the destiny of our children and the millennial. The greatest contributor comes from the abdication of parental visibility and leadership responsibility within the family and the broader community.
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Experimenting sex certainly is not part of the preparation for educational empowerment, nation-building, or economic development, if you ask me. In fact, it is one of the easiest ways to destroy a nation and its economy.
Challenges to Gender Norms and LGBTQ+ Experiences
Sex in Transition explores the lives of those who undermine the man/woman binary, exposing the gendered contradictions of apartheid and the transition to democracy in South Africa. In this context, gender liminality--a way to describe spaces between common conceptions of "man" and "woman"--is expressed by South Africans who identify as transgender, transsexual, transvestite, intersex, lesbian, gay, and/or eschew these categories altogether.
One of the main assignments of leadership right from the core family unit to the place of a provincial, national, and international space, is to shape and inform citizens in a particular manner that allows a sense of character discipline through the promotion of sheered moral values.
Research has now convincingly shown that men who have sex with men (MSM) in Africa are disproportionately affected by HIV, compared to men who do not have sex with men. Current research findings suggest that whether or not MSM also engage in sex with women is an important distinction that can help understand the diversity comprised by the epidemiological category of MSM. The study aims to build upon existing research and further explored differences between MSMW and MSME, based on research conducted in South Africa. Understanding of differences between these two groups might critically contribute to our comprehension of human sexuality.
Findings show that men who have sex with both men and women (MSMW) differ in several ways from men who exclusively have sex with men (MSME). MSMW were more likely than MSME to currently feel more sexually attracted to both men and women, while MSME were much more likely to feel more sexually attracted exclusively to men. MSME were more likely to describe their sexuality as gay than MSMW, while MSMW were more likely than MSME to describe their sexuality as either bisexual or straight.
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MSME had more male partners throughout their lifetime than MSMW. MSME were more likely than MSMW to have engaged in receptive anal sex without using a condom in the preceding year, whereas MSMW were more likely than MSME to have engaged in insertive anal sex without using a condom in the preceding year.
LGBTQI+ community in South Africa continues to contend with discrimination and hate crimes
Prostitution and Decriminalization
As part of the repeal of many apartheid laws under the government of P. W. Botha, The Immorality Amendment Act, 1988 renamed the Immorality Act, 1957 to the Sexual Offences Act, 1957 and criminalised the act of prostitution.
Decriminalisation has been under active discussion since 2009. It is argued that decriminalisation "would challenge the stigma that surrounds sex workers. It would help secure their human rights and dignity, and make for safer work and living conditions for them." Decriminalising prostitution would limit the power the police have on sex workers and it would stop the police or law enforcers from taking advantage of sex workers.
Human Rights Watch in its August 2019 report claimed that the sex workers in South Africa faced frequent arbitrary arrests and police profiling. In order to avoid police harassment, workers are forced to work in dangerous areas. There are numerous allegations of members of the South African Police Service committing acts of violence and abuse against sex workers.
South Africa has become one of the major destinations for underage sex tourism in Africa. South Africa is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children subjected to sex trafficking. Local criminal gangs dominate child sex trafficking. Nigerian gangs control the sex industry in several provinces. Thai and Chinese nationals control the sex trafficking of Asian women.
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The Role of Transactional Sex and HIV
Young adolescent women in sub-Saharan Africa are three to four times more likely to be HIV-positive than boys or men. One of the relationship dynamics that is likely to be associated with young women's increased vulnerability to HIV is transactional sex. Transactional sex is defined as a non-commercial, non-marital sexual relationship whereby sex is exchanged for money and/or gifts.
Overall, 14% of sexually active young women reported engaging in transactional sex. Engagement in transactional sex was associated with an increased risk of being HIV-positive. This study provides quantitative support demonstrating that transactional sex is associated with HIV infection in young women.
Addressing the Challenges
There are several complex, multi-layered issues that have grossly contributed to this major challenge, currently threatening the future of teens and millennia that must be addressed precisely and strategically. Rebuilding the social structure of South Africa starts by engaging the false, social views, most people living within the poverty bracket have been systematically forced into belief and accept. You cannot change people by merely seeking to change their clothes. No. You must be ready to reach deep into their frame of thought, you need to address their understanding to live, self, and the environment.
It is highly hypocritical to preach or talk about moral regeneration while the very system that drives the laws and policy mechanism of South Africa, allows pupils as young as the age of 12 to be loose and indecent, by giving them the freedom they have no mental or emotional capacity to handle. The idea of promoting social rights and freedom by allowing children to have their choice in such a highly complex matter, in my strong opinion, is an irresponsible policy decision, particularly in a society like that of South Africa where it is still struggling with one of the highest rates of marginalization, poverty, and inequality, divorce, criminal activity, drugs, prostitution, and the list continues.
A weak, religious, church, philosophy does not have the required capacity for such complex, socioeconomic and sociocultural challenges. The money government is spending to try to manage these avoidable issues are far greater than the money they can spend on preventing and empowering these teens to become better, productive citizens.
The misplaced priority in the process of democratic value has continued to play out in the kind of people the society produces today. Poverty, the lack of an honorable sense of dignity, identity is the central core of prostitution if you begin to think about it.
Some of these teens now willfully record and post these obscene acts on the internet for others to watch as if they are advertising themselves, and the unfortunate things is, the church and government seem not to have the right, effective solution in addressing the challenge.
Table 1: Differences Between MSMW and MSME in South Africa
| Characteristic | MSMW (Men who have sex with both men and women) | MSME (Men who exclusively have sex with men) |
|---|---|---|
| Sexual Attraction | More attracted to both men and women | More attracted exclusively to men |
| Sexual Identity | More likely to identify as bisexual or straight | More likely to identify as gay |
| Pleasure from Vaginal/Anal Sex with Women | Higher | Lower |
| Pleasure from Insertive Role with Men | Higher | Lower |
| Pleasure from Receptive Role with Men | Lower | Higher |
| Lifetime Male Partners | Fewer | More |
| Transactional Sex (Giving Something) | More likely | Less likely |
| Condomless Receptive Anal Sex | Less likely | More likely |
| Condomless Insertive Anal Sex | More likely | Less likely |
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