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MANZINI – The church must deal with individuals engaging in acts of criminality to reserve its dignity, says the chairperson of the Council of Swaziland Churches (CSC).

Archdeacon Bhekindlela Magongo said this in reaction to findings of a study set to investigate reasons for early sexual debut among in-school youth in Eswatini, which has a setting with high HIV incidence among the youth. The focus of the study was the Manzini Region and it was conducted by lecturers from the University of Eswatini (UNESWA) in partnership with ICAP. The study was published in PLOS ONE, a reputable multidisciplinary international journal.

Among the findings of the study was that school-going children listed attending church activities as one of the reasons for early sexual debut. The study stated that they used this, as it presented them with unsupervised time to engage in sexual activities.

Magongo said it was unfortunate that the church was used as a ruse in various issues, which were not standard with the morality it (church) held. He said the church existed to promote and build people within communities, where it was located. He said the fact that school-going children used the church to hoodwink their guardians, while seeking to engage in sexual activities, depicted that morality had disintegrated.

As such, the man of the cloth said: “The shenanigans that people engage in while using the church need honesty and introspection from all. As church leaders, we need to call each other out when one of us is engaging in immoral acts because society regards us as leaders.”

Magongo said before society even started blaming the school-going children for such immorality, it should be taken into account

MBABANE – Secretary General (SG) of Schools Committees and Parents Association (ESCAPA) Cyprian Dlamini said parents have shifted their roles.

He questioned how come parents did not follow-up on their children when they said they were in church. “I blame the parents more than anything; parents nowadays are negligent,” he said. Dlamini said there was no way a child would leave home and say they were going to a certain place and a parent would not bother to find out if the child indeed got to where they were going. The SG said this showed that parents were no longer performing their roles as parents but had shifted their roles to pastors.

He said this was the same issue that happened within the education space. Dlamini said some parents sent their children to school and did not follow-up on how they were performing, nor supported them with the necessities. However, at the end of the year, they expect a child to perform well. He stated that it was highly possible that the children who pretended to be in church were of parents who were not believers. “Children are opportunist, parents should follow-up on their children; if they are not with them, they should have at least a guardian,” he said. that they mimicked what they saw happening around them.

He said church leaders who were engaging in acts deviating from the Bible were contributing to the creation of a society which would be void of morality, and children who would not be afraid to use the church as a disguise for engaging in lurid acts. “What ought to be done is to collaborate efforts between communities, church leaders and members on instilling morality from an early age. If the children are empowered with knowledge by people practising what they preach, then such a challenge will not exist,” Magongo said.

On the other hand, participants in the study Magongo was reacting to, were said to have been limited to youth aged 18 to 24. This group was reported to be day scholars (non-boarders) from schools in the Manzini Region, who were unmarried but had had sexual intercourse.

Sensitive

In engaging in the study, it was said pupils younger than 18 years were excluded because they would have required parental consent to participate in the study, yet the subject matter (sexual behaviour) is considered sensitive and would have resulted in the disclosure of their sexual behaviours to their parents, since they targeted only youth who had engaged in sex.

In engaging in the study, data was collected from 81 sexually active in-school youth, through seven focus group discussions (FGDs) in four purposively selected public high schools (two urban and two rural) in the Manzini Region.

The authors of the study are Nomathemba C. Nxumalo, Mduduzi Colani Shongwe, Nontobeko Gwebu, Cebisile Ngcamphalala, Bonisile S. Nsibandze, Rejoice Nkambule and Harriet Nuwagaba-Biribonwoha. The study states that surprisingly, some of the reasons that were mentioned by the youth stemmed from what would normally be expected to be protective social structures, such as family and religious structures.

It was reported that the school-going children said attending church activities was one of the reasons for early sexual debut because it presented them with unsupervised time. The youth was said to have reported that at times they left their residential premises under such pretences when they knew very well that they were going to meet their sexual partners.

This, the authors said, was similar to findings from a Ghanaian study, which reported that adolescents used church occasions as opportunities to flee from their strict parents and ‘chill’ with their boyfriends. The authors reported that in their study, they had expected that religiosity would be perceived as protective against sexual activities, since nearly 90 per cent of the population practised Christianity, a religion that considered premarital sex as a sin.

They said this finding suggested that religion alone may not be protective; however, there may be a need for other values to be instilled when socialising children, which could help young people resist pressures to engage in early sex. “As a basic socialisation unit, family and household processes were reported as central in determining the timing of the first sexual encounter among the youth. Participants cited living arrangements, such as living alone (in rented flats), coming from a child-headed home, and staying with non-biological parents as the main drivers of early sexual debut,” reads an excerpt of the report.

It was said this could, in part, be explained by lack of supervision, particularly for those who resided alone and those in child-headed households, whereas good communication with parents and good parental monitoring were protective against early sexual initiation.