Mandla Mandela and his grandfather, Nelson Mandela

Three prominent gender rights organisations met with Mandla Mandela yesterday. This, after he made statements regarding South Africa’s sexual age of consent last year, saying that when it comes to culture, the sexual age of consent is a “white, Western notion.” He was specifically referring to the ukuthwala practice, where girls as young as 14-years-old are abducted and forcefully married to older men.

Here’s the full version of what he said:

The process of Ukuthwala had nothing to do with age and depended on whether the girl underwent the intonjane initiation, as arranged by her family. That is how culture works. When you are going to discuss culture do not even try to bring in white notions as such an approach will turn things upside down. Firstly, culture has no age. Age is something we learnt today because of our westernisation.

Mandela, who is the grandson of Nelson Mandela, met yesterday with the Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre, the Commission for Gender Equality and the Rural Women’s Movement. They asked him to acknowledge section 3(1) of the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act which states that all prospective spouses must be over the age of 18 to enter into a customary marriage. He was also asked to publicly condemn the abduction, kidnapping, assault and rape that currently accompany ukuthwala.

This is not the first time Mandla Mandela has been in the news for the wrong reasons. Earlier this year, he also “categorically denied” that he sold his grandfather’s funeral broadcasting rights to the SABC for a whopping R3 million.

As we all know, his grandfather is still alive.

[Source: News24]