Officials from the Department of Education, working together with the Department of Health, the Department of Social Development, and South African Police Services (SAPS) hosted a Learner Pregnancy dialogue at the Lusikisiki College of Education in Lusikisiki, last week.
According to the director for School Health Safety and Learner Enrichment from the Department of Education, Pam Gxuluwe, they hosted a programme where they tried to come up with a solution on how they can reduce the high number of learners who fall pregnant while still at school.
She said this event took two days, and on the first day they selected a district task team that will communicate with the community members to pass on a message that learners must be allowed to go to school and be protected by the community. On the second day they hosted a dialogue which included learners and principals.
“We have a problem of learners who fall pregnant, and what is more painful is that they drop out from school. We also look at the problem of the high rate of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases,” said Gxuluwe.
She added that they are working with the Department of Health, and the Department of Social Development because they realised they cannot fight this problem alone.
She said that their duty as the Department of Education is to teach learners in the classroom, but they noticed that some are not even concentrating on their studies due to some challenges.
“We are not experts; that is why we decided to ask the Department of Health to intervene. We also find that some do come to school, but they have a lot of challenges which include rape ordeals. There is no child who is 10 to 14 years who can plan to fall pregnant – so it is rape.”
She also added that police officers also took part in this event. According to her, some of the learners are allegedly afraid to open rape cases because they are saying some of the cases are left unattended.
“We said to them if they can be part of this journey we can be able to assist our children.”
Gxuluwe confirmed that they had looked at other districts but found that Lusikisiki area, under OR Tambo Inland Coastal, as the one that has a high rate of this problem. According to her, they will also visit Alfred Nzo East and Alfred Nzo West Districts, because they also have the same problem.
A Grade 11 learner from Thabazi Senior Secondary School in Lusikisiki, Abongile Khulume (17), said they had learnt a lot from this event.
“I learnt that it is wrong to fall pregnant while you are still young. We are still depending on our parents so falling pregnant increases the burden on their shoulders,” said Khulume.
Another learner, Abenathi Magangana (16) from Sangoni Senior Secondary School, said that they were told about the importance of education.
“If we can listen to what was said today we can have a bright future because having a baby at an early age is not a solution,” said Magangana.
