No government scholarship for virgins?

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+( cat is now out of the bag. Some of the students currently pursuing their dreams in various institutions of higher learning did not qualify for sponsorship from government.

In case you missed it, it was reported by this very publication last week that some officials manipulate the prepared scholarship reports to include non-qualifying candidates.

These are made to jump the queue simply by agreeing to the demands of those who pull the strings at the Ministry of Labour and Social Security.

Their demands, it was said, are either cash or sex.

At least one official had been fingered as the main culprit when that particular report was compiled. 2bviously, to make this the criminal reality it is, some qualifying candidates have to be removed from the list.

They will spend the rest of their lives wondering why their ancestors had not come through for them when they desperately needed the scholarship.

The non-qualifying ones will whistle all the way to lecture halls, carrying those big textbooks and neat notepads they should never have laid their hands on in the first place.

2ne gets confused trying to understand the modus operandi here.

Do the unscrupulous officials give the non-qualifying candidates a choice between providing cash or agreeing to have sex with them?

Is it as simple as that or they simply demand cash from males and sex from females? What if the male candidate does not have money but could be willing to do something else?

Is he shown the exit door before he can even finish explaining?

Also, do all the desperate female candidates have to offer sex or they are assessed and categorised according to looks, that is, the more attractive ones getting the rare chance to see the government official’s bedroom, while the not-so-attractive ones are forced to find cash and stop wasting time?

EmaSwati have been asking themselves all these and other questions since this story broke, but from a bird’s eye view, this issue is bigger than that.

This is a matter of life and death. It is a multi-pronged national issue that should also catch the attention of all those non-governmental organisations that deal with sexual reproductive health. They should jump to the defence of these aspiring college and university students, especially those who are celibate or have preserved their virginity all these years.

Believe it or not, there are still virgins in their late teens and early twenties out there.

It is not everybody who has defied biblical teachings and the advice of their loving parents by having sex before marriage. Some people are preserving themselves and waiting to have their husbands break their virginity while on honeymoon ± days after walking down the aisle.

These emaSwati should be encouraged. They should be regarded as role models for younger citizens in these days of HIV AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections.

They have never had sexual intercourse and are willing to do so only after graduation and marrying the partners of their dreams.

Most of them are influential in the Students Christian Movement (SCM). We cannot then have corrupt Ministry of Labour and Social Security officials deciding that all those who get scholarship to further their studies must first lose their virginity. Virgins are important. They should be allowed to exercise their constitutional right to abstain from sex until marriage.