Zille accused of stigmatising pregnant pupils

The dust has barely settled over South African opposition leader Helen Zille's suggestion that HIV-positive men who have unprotected sex with women should be charged with culpable homicide and a controversial lucky draw-competition to promote HIV/Aids testing, and she has done it again. This time the prize goes to young girls who managed to finish matric without falling pregnant. At the same time her party’s student arm chose the emotional mix of sex and race as the theme for a membership drive. 

Zille, the provincial premier of the Western Cape, was sharply criticised by the NGO from Sonke Gender Justice for her latest sortie into  the most private area of people’s lives; their sexual activity.

“Her remarks at the responsibility awards were deeply problematic: they stigmatised girls and women who have had children during their school  years, ignored the social factors shaping the reproductive health choices and intentions of many young women, and they completely neglected to mention the roles and responsibilities of the girls' male sexual partners,” the organization wrote in an article.

“As part of her and her party’s experiments with health economics in which politicians attempt to prompt public health changes by providing financial incentives for socially desirable behaviour, Zille and the DA awarded cash prizes of R10 000 each to girls who had finished school and not gotten pregnant.

“Her remarks at the responsibility awards were deeply problematic: they stigmatized girls and women who have had children during their school going years, ignored the social factors shaping the reproductive health choices and intentions of many young women,  and they completely neglected to mention the roles and responsibilities of the girls’ male sexual partners.

“Zille described the girls who won the responsibility awards as: ‘young people who live responsibly, have pursued excellence in their education and who have avoided the social ills plaguing their communities. They have demonstrated that no matter what your circumstances are, you can rise above them and can pursue your dream.’

“Her comments conveniently ignore the systemic nature of the drivers of the context that often leads to women and girls falling pregnant,” the article says.

The organisation argues that if the programme is to empower girls and promote increased rates of high-school graduation it will need to move beyond superficial celebrations of personal choice and personal responsibility and instead look at some of the social forces shaping the life choices of many girls and young women.

It calls for comprehensive sexuality education at schools, the availability of “termination of pregnancy … to those who need it without stigma and condemnation, and that real efforts are made to transform the gender norms that equate manhood with dominance over women, with multiple sexual partners, and with drinking large amounts of alcohol.”

“However, instead of commenting on the complex social forces contributing to teenage pregnancy Zille simply moralises and stigmatises. She says: ‘More often than not, government programmes reward those who behave irresponsibly.’ She doesn’t attempt to justify or explain this statement—although most people would recognise this as a veiled reference to her dissatisfaction about the National Government’s very successful roll-out of anti-retroviral treatment to nearly 1.5 million people living with HIV and Aids.”

A R10,000 responsibility prize might generate media attention, the organisation says, but argues that “… to improve the lives of the vast majority of girls and women who don’t luck-out and win a quick cash prize, Premier Zille will have to do a lot more. “Comprehensive sexuality education, including on HIV and gender norms, must be integrated into the school curriculum. Young women should have access to the health services and economic opportunities the constitution guarantees.”

In the meantime the Democratic Alliance’s student organisation (Daso) also finds itself embroiled in controversy and heated debate on social media networks about a sexually suggestive membership-promotion poster of a semi-naked young couple – a white man and black woman. The poster was to go up on all tertiary education campuses across the country.

The same image is also being used in pamphlets, with the slogan “In our future, you wouldn’t look twice.”