By Palesa Nguqu

KwaZulu-Natal is grappling with a grim truth – hundreds of young girls are falling victim to sexual abuse and becoming mothers at an alarmingly young age.

Recent statistics paint a stark picture of a crisis that demands urgent intervention.

A recent report by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA), covering the period from 1 January 2024 to 28 February 2025, reveals a distressing trend in KZN.

During this period, a significant number of young girls — some as young as 10 — have given birth, a clear indication that many are likely victims of statutory rape.

Thousands more, aged 15 to 19, also became pregnant. These figures are deeply troubling, especially considering that the data represent only registered births, meaning the real numbers are likely much higher.

Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) MP Liezl van der Merwe, Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, called for the urgent need for action.

“The IFP believes that teenage and child pregnancies are a national crisis, and more must be done to protect our children,” said van der Merwe.

Riona Gokool, the DA’s KZN Spokesperson on Community Safety, has also called for urgent and coordinated action to address the rising cases of child abuse and underage pregnancies.

She emphasised the need for the immediate creation of a dedicated interdepartmental task team, with a clear mandate to identify, report, and prosecute cases involving minors.

Gokool outlined her expectations for the task team — to be established within 30 to 90 days — with district units operational within three months and full provincial deployment within six months.

She stressed that this approach aligns with the DA’s national efforts to promote multi-stakeholder action and provincial oversight.

“The DA demands the immediate creation of a dedicated interdepartmental task team,” Gokool said.

“Our expectations include a mandate to identify and flag every underage pregnancy reported at clinics and schools, ensure mandatory reporting obligations are met, monitor investigation progress from report to docket to NPA, and convene weekly case review meetings for high-risk matters.”

She further highlighted the need to move from reactive audits to real-time, proactive monitoring — including digital docket tracking, court-watching, mandatory reporting protocols, and escalation procedures.

Quarterly public reports in the legislature, she added, would ensure transparency and accountability, tracking data on statutory rape reports, investigations, prosecutions, and convictions.

She further said that the DA is actively advocating for these measures at both provincial and national levels, pressing for the immediate formation of the task team with clear terms of reference, dedicated resources, and a timeline for full implementation.

Concrete interventions such as digital dashboards, expanded court-watching, mandatory reporting checks, specialist detective training, and an NPA fast-track pathway form part of their strategic plan to better protect children, she said.

The report also highlights systemic issues such as delays in birth registration, which hinder access to healthcare and education.

Many births are registered late — sometimes years after birth — due to administrative delays or lack of awareness.

Under the Births and Deaths Registration Act, all births must be registered within 30 days, yet compliance remains a persistent challenge.

Van der Merwe, on the other hand, underscored the need for a coordinated, multi-sectoral response, emphasising that addressing child abuse and underage pregnancy requires collective effort from government, law enforcement, civil society, and communities.

The DA expressed deep concern over the rising statistics, framing them as a systemic failure and a crisis of neglect.

DA MPL Shontel de Boer stated: “Our young girls cannot suffer in silence. Every child deserves to grow up free from abuse, exploitation, and fear. We must do more to safeguard their rights and ensure justice is served.”

These alarming figures serve as a wake-up call for urgent reform.

Protecting children requires early intervention, strong law enforcement, sustained education campaigns, and active community involvement.

Prioritising birth registration is also essential to ensure every child’s rights are protected from day one.

Van der Merwe called for strengthening the Children’s Act 38 of 2005 to clarify enforcement procedures, employing trained social workers, and providing resources to NGOs working with vulnerable children.

INSIDE EDUCTION

By Levy Masiteng

The Portfolio Committee on Basic Education has expressed deep concern over the alarming number of statutory rape cases in South African schools, revealing that only 42,650 of the country’s 405,000 educators have been vetted.

This shocking figure emerged during a parliamentary enquiry on Wednesday aimed at addressing the prevalence of sexual offences in schools and identifying measures to prevent such incidents.

The committee called for the urgent acceleration and expansion of the vetting process to include all school staff, not only teachers.

The enquiry heard submissions from the Department of Basic Education, provincial departments, teachers’ unions, legal advocacy groups, and learner representative organisations.

Committee chairperson Joy Maimela said the proceedings exposed several disturbing cases, including that of a school principal in the Eastern Cape who was accused of sexual misconduct, resigned before the case was finalised, and was rehired at another school a year later.

“The South African Council for Educators (SACE) had no records of the case because authorities never reported it. This meant the accused kept his SACE certificate and was rehired as an educator,” Maimela said.

She criticised the Eastern Cape Department of Education for its failure to explain the re-employment, adding:

“The Eastern Cape cannot evade this matter. We want answers on why the case was not reported to SACE and how the perpetrator was rehired.”

The incident, Maimela said, raised serious questions about the effectiveness of vetting mechanisms and the ability of education authorities to protect learners.

“The problem is multifaceted,” she added. “It cuts across social, economic, and cultural lines — reflecting deep-rooted structural inequalities and moral failures in our society.”

Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube acknowledged systemic weaknesses.

“This is a complex issue. One of the biggest challenges is ensuring reports lead to convictions. The key to ridding our schools of sexual offenders is having them in jail,” said Gwarube.

Learner representatives told the committee that many teachers lack the training and knowledge to handle statutory rape cases or to report such incidents properly.

“Teachers do not have the skills to deal with statutory rape in schools, and some do not even know how to report these offences,” one representative said.

The committee also heard that underreporting by principals and families remains widespread, driven by cultural silence and fear of victimisation.

“We have noted with concern that, while policies mandate reporting, compliance remains inconsistent across provinces and districts,” Maimela said.

The committee recommended legislative amendments to make it compulsory for parents to report statutory rape, alongside comprehensive education on the age of consent and reporting obligations.

Maimela concluded that the committee will probe legislative gaps and scrutinise departmental awareness campaigns, adding:

“This confusion leads to under-reporting, delays, and the continued victimisation of children. The challenge is not the absence of law, but the failure of implementation — and the gap between policy and practice remains wide.”

INSIDE EDUCATION

By Ndumiso Daluxolo Ngidi and Melusi Andile Dlamini

Violence among learners in South African schools is a pressing concern. The minister of basic education told parliament in 2025 that hundreds of bullying cases had been reported in the first few weeks of the year. Since then, a series of alarming incidents have further drawn public attention.

While these occurrences mirror the high rates of violence in the country, they are also symptoms of systemic challenges within South African schools.

In 2015 the government introduced the National School Safety Framework to set minimum standards of safety and help schools understand and meet their responsibilities. It noted “the relationship between violence and other ecological factors relating to safe and caring schools by locating the school within its broader community”.

The framework suggests an awareness of structural determinants of violence in schools. But the sustained rise in incidents of interpersonal violence among learners points to the need for renewed attention, especially among schoolboys.

We are researchers whose interests include the anthropology of masculinities and health, and inclusive education and children’s geographies.

In a recent study we encountered a practice in schools called ukufikisana: a kind of initiation through which senior boys assert their dominance over junior boys, often through violence and intimidation.

Derived from the isiZulu phrase ukufikisana emandleni (“testing each other’s power”), the practice shares similarities with “hazing” or bullying. But it also reveals the social and cultural dimensions of violence within schools. For instance, schoolboys described ukufikisana as how one becomes “fully a boy”, suggesting that the experience and exertion of violence are inevitable.

Our findings demonstrate how ukufikisana reinforces hierarchical gender relations and normalises violence as a means of navigating power and identity among boys. This is deeply entrenched in the school environment.

We suggest that solutions lie in the interplay of poverty, violence and gender norms.

What boys said about bullying

The study drew on a larger photovoice study exploring learners’ perspectives on violence in and around their school. It focused on 14 teenage boys (aged 14-17) attending a poorly resourced, co-educational school in Inanda, KwaZulu-Natal province. Inanda is an urban area characterised by poverty, unemployment and high levels of violence and crime. Its circumstances are a legacy of the policies applied to black South Africans under apartheid.

The study engaged boys as experts in their own lives, allowing them to share their experiences through images and films. We followed ethical protocols to get consent from schools, parents and learners. A social worker was available to provide support.

We prompted the participants to visually depict what violence looked like in their school environment.

Working in pairs, the boys captured images of simulated acts and experiences of violence using cellphones, discussed them and added captions. Then they presented this material in focus group discussions, which were recorded audiovisually and transcribed. We looked for themes in what was discussed.

The boys produced images showing the various ways that violence emerged at school. In one instance, two participants recreated a stabbing incident in which senior boys threatened to stab a junior boy.

Senior boys spoke of ukufikisana as an initiation practice that reinforced their position as “leaders”. One described the “younger and powerless boys” as “puppets”; another said “it’s to show them who is boss in this school”. Another spoke of it as a “baptism of fire”, saying: they must always be prepared for it because it is coming for them … We show them that we are in charge of the school and they must respect that.

Younger boys told us: They don’t listen when we try to stop them; they just threaten to beat us.

I was scared of them. So I just kept quiet and let them do whatever they wanted.

It hurt in more ways than one. One boy said:

Ukufikisana is not just what they do; it is also what they say to you … After that experience, I just kept to myself, and I am now more reserved at school.

What ukufikisana does

From our analysis of what the boys said, it appears that ukufikisana serves a dual function. For senior boys, it works as a rite of passage that solidifies their position as “fully boys”, and warrants their demonstration of physical strength, authority and control. For junior boys, the experience enforces submission and vulnerability, framing them as incomplete or “lesser boys”.

This dynamic normalises violence among boys in school settings. It also perpetuates rigid and harmful ways of being boys at school. At school, boys must always be ready to fight and to show their power through violence.

From this perspective, it’s possible to understand why violence may be prevalent and persisting in some South African schools.

For most boys, ukufikisana primes boys to think that bullying and the reinforcement of power through violence are key attributes for their lives. The participants described how this practice shaped their daily interactions, fostering a culture where dominance and submission were ingrained in their understanding of what it meant to be a man.

These findings align with broader concerns raised in recent anti-bullying research, globally and locally, which highlights the need for school approaches to address bullying.

What needs to change

We suggest that to effectively combat bullying, schools should move beyond punitive measures and zero-tolerance policies. Instead, they should adopt participatory and community-driven strategies that not only consider the interplay of poverty, violence and gender norms, but also allow learners to contribute to possible solutions to violence.

One way this might be done is through actively involving learners as equal stakeholders in school violence interventions.

Ndumiso Daluxolo Ngidi, Senior Lecturer, University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Melusi Andile Dlamini, Lecturer in Anthropology, Rhodes University.

THE CONVERSATION