Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya
While, like me, you might disagree with the uThukela Municipality to award bursaries on grounds of young women availing themselves to be checked whether they are still virgins, I refuse to club with those who see the local authority as backward, and complete idiots.
For one thing, nothing is ever achieved in a debate where the other party is made to feel like their world view is so silly, they cannot be entertained.
The municipality’s heart is in the right place. We cannot continue talking about the face of poverty and of the most afflicted by HIV and Aids being that of a young, black, rural female, and not to seek interventions that are specific to the group most at risk.
We know from experience here and elsewhere that the key to building a cohesive nation is being open to the paradigms of those who live among us and, even if we still vehemently disagree, acknowledge their right to hold the view or practise the custom insofar as it is within the law, reason and does not impact negatively on others.
That out of the way, here is why I disagree with the uThukela Municipality’s chastity bursaries.
Firstly, one can be chaste, but be the cruellest, meanest person in the world. Stories of clergy who have taken vows of chastity but committed horrendous acts of violence tell us this.
Secondly, the state must stay away from determining what is “moral”. Individual families must determine for themselves what they understand as moral and then pass these on to their children. If the behaviour carries carrots and sticks, it must be for that family to dispense these.
Imagine if a municipality led by the African Christian Democratic Party decided that by virtue of being voted in, this meant the local electorate shared their world view and understanding of what is moral and, based on this, decided that a certain portion of the municipality’s budget would go to born-again Christians.
Imagine if in communities where they hold that all young men go through the initiation school rite of passage, decided that before one could be allocated a house, they had to prove that they were “real” men. I am sure there would be an outrage.
Those in favour of virginity testing often say that those of us who criticise them do not offer solutions. I have sympathy for this view. It is always easier to tear down an argument than to come up with alternatives.
Last week, I met a young man in Soweto who told me that he had helped set up homework clubs in his neighbourhood. The children are not only encouraged and supervised to do their homework, but they are also introduced to art.
They are taught to play a musical instrument or take part in spoken word or visual art. Imagine if this young man was a young woman who lived in Chastity Municipality and needed a bursary to study further. Imagine being told that while she has all the right credentials, unfortunately, they cannot locate her hymen.
Municipalities who wish to inculcate a sense of responsible citizenship in the young – as the uThukela Municipality clearly does – should encourage the young to actively do something that benefits them and society (like the Soweto youngster I mentioned earlier) rather than their present tactic where they are rewarded for avoiding an action, in this case, avoiding having sex.
As things stand, the municipality sends a message that morality is the same as self-preservation.
I have serious difficulties with the view that an act that only benefits the actor and has no positive contribution to anyone else can be defined as moral.
The municipality must say that while there are obvious benefits from delaying sexual debut for as long as possible, they live in a society that is desperate for their skills, talents and industry.
If they must encourage chastity, this should not be as an end in itself, but the first school of what is the eternal battle between the demands of the flesh and those of the soul. If won by the flesh, it leads to the high levels of consumerism, crass materialism, destructive love for power and money.
By problematising sex and making it a measure by which one’s morality can be determined, we probably create a sexually dysfunctional society where young men think sex as exotic fruit to be had by fair or foul means and young women feel unnecessarily dirty because they happen to be in touch with their own sexuality.
As with many other issues facing South Africa, there are never easy answers, but at least the uThukela Municipality has not shrugged its shoulders and thrown its hands up in the air. It has started a conversation and instead of laughing at them, we must congratulate them for doing what they could with what they have. We can all learn from that.