Shocking sex lives of Cape Town's teens

This article was originally published on page 1 of The Cape Times on February 17, 2009.

Shocking sex lives of Cape Town's teens

Teenagers who abstain from sex are "losers", HIV and Aids are "myths" and it is normal for girls to exchange sexual favours for material gain.

Those are just some of the disheartening beliefs that have emerged from a major UCT study of teenagers in Cape Town, which shows the enormous amount of peer pressure youngsters are under to party, forego educational opportunities and even tolerate violence if they stand to gain goods such as cellphones and clothing.

But conversely, youngsters are also making a greater effort to nurture relationships in their homes, and are more racially tolerant than ever before.

One of the study leaders, Rachel Bray, has called on skilled South Africans to share their knowledge about the education system with less-privileged adolescents, to help shift the widespread under-achievement the researchers investigate in the 350-page document.

Huge peer pressure to have sex, party and drop out of school; their parents' ignorance about education and, in one community, their elders' contempt for their abilities, were some of the obstacles causing large numbers of teenagers to fail.

The study, "Growing up in the New South Africa: Childhood and Adolescence in Post-Apartheid South Africa", examines children's lives at home, in the neighbourhood, among friends and at school. It describes the Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS) which followed the lives of 5 000 Capetonians aged 14 to 22, for four years until 2006. Those interviewed were a representative sample of communities across the city.

The researchers also took an in-depth look, over 16 months, at the lives of hundreds of children and adolescents in the largely white suburb of Fish Hoek, the coloured area Ocean View and the black township of Masiphumelele.

These settlements are close to one another in the South Peninsula but share socio-economic traits with others across the city, so are representative in key ways.

The researchers found unexpected similarities in these communities. For example, both boys and girls in all three places faced huge peer pressure to experiment sexually, and many faced what the researchers called "a quiet violence" in sexual relationships.

In Ocean View and Masiphumelele the choice was stark: enjoy the "sex and partying", or knuckle down to schoolwork. Many teenagers found it impossible to follow a lonely "straight and narrow" path. Only a very few, those highly skilled at negotiating relationships, managed to have boy- or girlfriends and stay committed to schoolwork.

Many teenagers ignored the pressure: about half of all 18-year-olds had had sex, the CAPS study found. But the poorer the community, the younger the sexual debut. About 83% of black girls and boys had had sex by the age of 19.

Teenagers said the abstainers were the "losers". In all three communities, teenagers found it hard to find adults who would give them guidance on sex and discuss their problems. In all three communities unsafe sex was widespread. Teenagers felt HIV posed them no threat, as it was "invisible".

Girls in all three places also believed their boyfriends should buy them designer clothes, cellphones or other goods and that men should be the decision-makers in relationships. Many girls in Ocean View and Masiphumelele sought "sugar daddies".

"Most of the time, girls want money from a relationship. They say, 'I'd better go out with someone who's working'," said a 17-year-old from Masiphumelele.

Many of these girls submitted to their boyfriends, even when they became violent.

One of the researchers' main concerns was that few poor parents understood the education process, from the content of school subjects to how to apply for bursaries.

Bray suggested educated adults "befriend" those in need of mentoring and "become role-models".

"We, as adults, need to facilitate children in finding such relationships, because poverty and the problems in education are not going to be sorted out tomorrow," she said.

"Children respect adults who have skills and want to share them. Relationships are what sustain young people and the quality of them is key."

· Names in the study were changed to protect the participants' identity.


Were you aware of this sort of thing? What can and should we do to change this?