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The Eastern Cape faces a daunting battle with a staggering surge in teenage pregnancies.

Since April 2024, the number of young mothers has soared, with more than 4,000 girls between the ages of 10 and 19 giving birth in public healthcare facilities. Within the same time frame, 94 girls in the province between the ages of 10 and 14 have given birth, according to Eastern Cape Health Department spokesperson Mkhululi Ndamase.

The region has been beset by serious challenges related to teen pregnancies, with Ndamase reporting via The Daily Maverick that the Social Development and Education departments convened with teachers, parents, and students in the Alfred Nzo and Ingquza Hill municipalities to address the issue.

Among the several factors contributing to this plight, Ndamase says there is a lack of adequate parental care, support and supervision, and a lack of factual education about sexual reproductive health. He also said there is an unwarranted level of gender-based violence, especially in areas where there are no hostels; “children are renting in areas where they study and they become victims”, he said.

The Eastern Cape has ranked third for registered teenage pregnancies, after KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo.

According to a report by Newzroom Afrika, Zwelitsha High School in Ntabankulu reported 27 pregnancies in 2023. This year, the rural school confirmed that there were 19 pregnancies.

In 2023, Daily Maverick reported that between 2020 and 2023, at least 1,841 girls aged 10 to 14 gave birth at public health facilities in the province. Between 2020 and 2022, at least 17,740 teenagers aged 15 to 19 gave birth at state hospitals in the province.

Ndamase emphasized that teenage pregnancies transcend the realm of the Health Department, highlighting them as a societal crisis that demands collective action from all sectors of the community.

Vuyiseka Mboxela, spokesperson for Eastern Cape Education MEC Fundile Gade, said his department had been working with the health department to teach pupils about the disadvantages of teenage pregnancy.

But Zoleka Mtiya (39), who runs awareness programmes to educate young people on health matters, says the increase in teenage pregnancy is sometimes due to older men, not just teenage boys.

“We have predators in our societies and society is silent about older men who prey on young girls. There are older men involved, not young boys. In the province, the departments of health and education have tried to educate young girls through awareness programmes but it is beyond the departments’ control.”

Mtiya said society does not hold boys or men accountable for impregnating school girls.

“When it comes to a boy child, society does not want to take responsibility. No one cares what a boy child does in the evenings, where they go, and a boy can have unprotected sex and no one cares.”

This is one example where the mantra ‘boys will be boys’ needs to be slapped out of a person.

There is also the issue of underreporting what really happens to these young girls.

The Democratic Alliance’s health spokesperson in the province, Jane Cowley, said these pregnancies are sometimes the result of statutory rape and that they are underreported.

Of the 553 girls aged between 10 and 14 who gave birth in Eastern Cape between March 2022 and March 2023, only 60 cases of statutory rape were opened.

“There are no reports of who the father is, and there is no accountability. This is heartbreaking. This is a multifaceted problem. Some of these children have been sexually abused by family members who will then not allow them to report these cases,” said Cowley.

She added that the police and the health and education departments needed to become more involved.

[source:dailymaverick]