PAEDOPHILES HIJACKING PRACTICES
CULTURAL organisations plan to make submissions to the portfolio committee on traditional affairs to push for the continued practice of virginity testing and ukuthwala.
Yesterday, gender rights, human rights and religious organisations, the SAPS anti-rape clusters and cultural activists converged in Durban to deliberate and share dialogues on the cultural practices as they face scrutiny by policy-makers.
Nomagugu Ngobese of the Nomkhubulwane Culture and Youth Development Organisation said if policy-makers pursue the plans to abolish virginity testing, they will be indirectly declaring war on culture and indigenous knowledge.
“There is a tendency in this country to undermine culture or anything that is African. Anything aimed at preserving culture is labelled as backward.
“Parents
have
already
been stripped of the rights to discipline children. If we take away virginity testing, this will spell disaster for the black girl child,” Ngobese said.
She said assertions that virginity testing violated the girl’s rights to dignity was unfounded, saying the young women were not forced to preserve their virginity as it was their choice. “Our forefathers fought for the rights and recognition of our culture... now protected by the constitution.”
The CRL Rights Commission, mandated to promote and protect the rights of cultural, religious and linguistic communities, said according to its research, nothing was untoward about the practice.
It said criminals misuse the practice to pursue paedophile activities.
“applies to two adults of marriage age. It is aimed at fasttracking lobolo negotiations if they have deadlocked. Both parties agree to the set-up,” the commission’s chairwoman Thoko MkhwanaziXaluva said. “Policy-makers must not sit in boardrooms and speak about things they don’t understand.
“They must involve indigenous people. They have not even consulted the parents and maidens to gauge whether they felt virginity testing was abusive.”
Meanwhile, provincial Gender Equality commissioner Thoko Mkhwanazi said there wasn’t any accepted definition of “Our community dialogues have revealed that in many instances, young girls are forced to marry.”
Next week, cultural activists will submit their list of grievances to KwaZulu-Natal premier calling for the protection of virginity testing.