Women have a duty to carry out virginity testing to fight the HIV/Aids pandemic, says Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
In a Women's Day speech yesterday Buthelezi ventured into the controversial topic of virginity testing, a cultural practice that could soon be outlawed. He was addressing a rally of the IFP Women's Brigade in Durban and raised the issue in an effort to "dispel the myth of virgin cure" - the belief that sex with a virgin could cure a man of HIV and Aids.
"I want to see the women and men of our party campaigning to dispel this myth," Buthelezi said, adding that women were already bearing the brunt of the HIV and Aids pandemic.
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"I want to see women taking the lead to educate and empower other women to control their sexual relationships. In African society it was always women who safeguarded the chastity of virgins before marriage. It is older women who carry out virginity tests on younger women. It was not done on an order from any man."
It was still women's duty, as before, to do the testing.
"It was women's duty then and it is women's duty [today] especially now that we are being overwhelmed by the pandemic of HIV/Aids."
Buthelezi is likely to draw flak from children's and women's rights campaigners for his comments, which may also revive the storm created last year when Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini endorsed testing and called on business to help extend it to males to fight HIV and Aids.
Virginity testing is one of a number of controversial issues holding back the finalisation of the children's bill, which seems set to outlaw the custom.
The bill, nearly 10 years in the making, was amended two months ago and is set to be processed soon. The proposed ban has angered traditionalists, who say virginity testing encourages girls to remain chaste, thus helping to prevent HIV.
Buthelezi was the first top South African politician to defy the HIV and Aids stigma by publicly acknowledging that two of his children had died of the disease. He has repeatedly attacked the ANC government's lack of adequate response to it.
Yesterday he again appealed for more involvement in caring for Aids widows and orphans and for other forms of support at local government level. A main thrust of his speech, however, was that most women are yet to benefit from South Africa's progressive laws and constitutionally enshrined rights.
"I appeal again to IFP public representatives, particularly our female members, to fulfil their opposition oversight role by separating achievements and challenges in terms of gender during public debates, so that we can appraise what needs to be done to empower women.
"Have women's rights - as we have promoted, enacted and implemented them - so far achieved this in practice?... most of you would not have experienced much improvement in your daily lives," Buthelezi said.
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