Advocacy Manager at Women and Men against Child Abuse, Nga Morombedzi says poverty is the biggest contributor of statutory rape in South Africa. This as country observes Child Protection week to raise awareness about the rights of children as articulated in the Children’s Act of 2005.
This year the focus is on teenage pregnancy which has seen a spike during COVID-19 outbreak in 2021. Social Development Deputy Minister, Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu has urged communities to report cases of statutory rape against those who sleep with and impregnate underage girls.
Morombedzi says kids as young as ten years old are not in any position to give consent to any sexual behaviour.
“In 2021 we spoke of 23 thousand plus teenage children who had been pregnant; these are children between 10 and 18. You cannot refer to a 10 year-old as a teenager firstly and the experiment is not a result of sexual activity of sexual behaviour. Those are rape cases. 23 000 a significant number of children that were raped have increased and this doesn’t take into account that this number could easily double because of the stigma around teen pregnancy and children who have been abused. Poverty, unemployment and a lack of education, those are three biggest. But if you look at statistic around contributing factors of teenage pregnancy poverty plays a significant role,” says Morombedzi.
VIDEO: Child Protection Week – Importance of the role of parents in raising children
