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PENNY LEBYANE FOUNDATIONS SPEAKS OUT AGAINST THE SEXUAL OFFENCES ACT PROMULGATION

Penny Lebyane Foundation is extremely disturbed by Judge Pierre Rabie’s ruling (Pretoria High Court) which effectively allows children aged between 12 and 16 years to engage in consensual sex.

We are awfully concerned by the event that a director of the Teddy Bear Clinic, Shaheda Omar’s and by the decision to take the matter to court in the first place.  We are certain that Ms Omar and Judge Pierre Rabie are not conscious of the consequence that this promulgation will do to the country and the scruples of our children.

The Teddy Bear Clinic for Abused Children (TTBC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring abused children are protected and rehabilitated. They provide therapy, counseling, assistance, love, comfort, safety and ongoing support to children who have been abused.

Currently, teenage pregnancy in South Africa is spiralling out of control, (young girls are encouraged to go to schools pregnant) and by altering the Sexual Offences Act clause; Judge Rabie and Shaheda have single handily given our children the keys to having sex.   

In 2011, "The Department of Basic Education released the Annual Surveys for Ordinary Schools for 2009-2010", which stated that :  In Grade 3 alone, about 109 pupils fell pregnant in 2009 - as against "only" 17 in the same grade in 2008. In Grade 4, the number increased to 107 from 69 in 2008, and in Grade 5, 297 girls fell pregnant in 2009; The highest concentration of pregnant pupils was in high schools, from Grade 7 to Grade 9; In 2009, a total of 45276 girls became pregnant;

Last year KZN, MEC of Education Senzo Mchunu said that school girls are falling pregnant in their thousands in Kwa-Zulu Natal and, in the majority of cases, the men to blame are their teachers.  In 2010 and 2011, 12 971 KZN schoolgirls fell pregnant, and Mchunu said that this year the figure looked shocking.  We need to look at the dynamics of this promulgation and how it ties in other policies within the country for example:   if a girl of 12 years has sex with a school teacher is this legal now or does it still count as statutory rape? And, if so, what if the young 12 years old girl says she gave the teacher consent does this count as OK?

It is also important to state that according to the The National Youth Victimisation Study of 2005 found that only 11.3% of rapes are reported to the South African Police Service.

If 60 child rapes are reported and that represents 11.3% of all rapes, they extrapolated that 530 child rapes take place every day. This equals 1 child rape every three minutes.

“Rape is the least likely violent crime to be reported, and victims cite fear of reprisal as the commonest reason for not telling anyone.”

Mavalani high school alone, in rural Giyani, in the northern province of Limpopo, had 24 teenage pregnant girls with an average of two in every class in 2011.  And this is still low compared to the rest of the continent, where UNICEF says the comparative figure is over 100 in countries like Nigeria, Uganda, Somalia and Swaziland.

But South Africa has the world’s largest HIV-positive population, with 5.7 million of its 51 million people; about 12% are infected with the virus.  This creates added threat that has already prompted health officials to rethink AIDS and pregnancy prevention programmes targeted at the youth.

In 2011 annual national antenatal sentinel HIV and syphilis prevalence survey in Pretoria, Surveillance data shows an increasing rate of HIV infections among pregnant women in Mpumalanga, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said Mpumalanga had shown an increase in estimated HIV prevalence of two percent.  The province had a 34.7 percent prevalence rate in 2009 and the figure has since risen to 36.7 percent, according to the survey compiled by the department of health.

South Africa, we have lost our moral fibre and we need to become parents of our nation otherwise we are going to lose our country to the already unscrupulous decisions and messages that we are sending out to our children and the world, the least we can do is to restore and instil biblical doctrines to the decisions we make for our country and most importantly for our children, Ms. Lebyane director of the Penny Lebyane Foundation said

The Penny Lebyane Foundation is requesting all those who are against this promulgation to stand up and join us in a minute of silence on Sunday the 20^th of January at 12:00 noon, and to wear BLACK if you are against this promulgation.

From a genuinely and extremely alarmed foundation

The end…