IZIKHOTHANE : WHAT VALUES ARE PARENTS TEACHING THEIR CHILDREN?

Izikhothane: The 18 boys

“Izikhothane” are a group of young men who wear expensive clothing, consume a lot of alcohol and go partying. However, most of these boys do not even come from rich families but the amount of money that goes into a day’s outfit can feed their families for 3 months. Ukukhothana is now a popular culture in most of the townships in South Africa particularly in SOWETO the most popular in terms of history and it being one of the largest.

Sikhothane mom: cutting edge SABC 1

The woman you see in the picture is mother to two ‘sikhothane’ boys, she is unemployed and lives in a 4 room house that is not in good condition and there she is on national television bragging about how expensive their clothes are. My argument here is what values are parents teaching their children? This woman is also the one who gives her boys money to go buy alcohol worth R 5000.00. when I first saw this on television last year I was shocked and thought maybe after people have seen the documentary this madness would stop. But to my surprise, it didn’t stop infact it got worse. Now there are Izikhothane everywhere and I don’t think that it is a positive culture to adopt. Part of being a Sikhothane is to tear money, pour drinks at each other and with all the hungry people all those things can be put to good use.

I believe that we can change the world by changing the way people look at the world. If someone can actually teach these young men piositive values, they might just stop the madness and put that money they spend to good use. And I think our country should have parenting school to teach people how to raise positive people who can bring about positive change to the world one day.

WHEN WILL ENOUGH BE ENOUGH?

http://www.ehow.com/

Rape is one of the leading increasing crimes in South Africa and all around the world and instead of rapists feeling any remorse for what they are doing, they are actually justifying it. Early in the year around January, I remember there was an incident where a young lady was being followed by a group of men in Noord Taxi rank in Johannesburg because she was wearing a short skirt. She was harassed and humiliated but the follow up of that case vanished in thin air. And if I remember correctly, an incident of that nature took place a few years ago in the same taxi rank where taxi drivers said; “if a woman comes in my taxi wearing a revealing skirt or dress, I will touch her because she would be asking for it”. I was still in high school and I remember telling my mom that I will not wear all my short skirts because I was so scared.

Woman all around South Africa live in fear of being raped and it seems to me that the system is not doing enough to stop this. In recent occurrences,   17 year old girl was gang raped by 6 men and two of these men are suspected to miners meaning they are under the age of 18. What shocked me when I read about this story was the reality of it, what kind of role models do these young men have. There are a lot of campaigns being done on rape but I feel that people don’t realize how important something is until it happens to them.

Here’s something I would like to live you with; Rape is like murder, when a person gets raped not only do they lose their dignity but they lose their souls and the scars never heal. Don’t wait for it to happen to you or someone you love. LET US STAND TOGETHER IN FIGHTING CRIME!

TEENAGE PREGNANCY: MISTAKE VS SOCIAL GRANT

teenage pregnancy

When I had the whole topic of teenage pregnancy on my mind I had that whole ideology that the increase of it is due to the social grant, but to my surprise that is not the case at all. I had an idea that maybe if they cancel the social grant then we will see the decrease in number of teenage pregnancy, but after what I discovered while doing my research, I realize that it has nothing to do with social grants but the wrong choices teenage girls make and often refer to those choices as “A Mistake”.

According to the human sciences research council(HSRC) the number of pregnancies among  girls aged 15-19 years peaked in 1996, two years before the child support grant was introduced, and has been declining ever since. In addition, only one in five mothers receives the grant. www.hsrc.ac.za/document-2027.phtm. I’m aware that teenage pregnancy is overrated and nobody really wants to talk about it but whether we pay attention or we don’t, it affects our society therefore is affects us and I believe that if we really take the time to think about it, we could come up with ideas that could make a huge difference.

Another issue I don’t get is how teenagers fall pregnant with all the sex education in schools. We know about condoms and other contraceptives but still fall pregnant and say; “It’s a mistake” okay let me get this straight, you know that if you have unprotected sex you will fall pregnant, you do it and expect not to fall pregnant? Whose fault is it really, are parents not talking to their kids about sex? Is it teachers’ maybe? Or the health workers are not doing their jobs well?  All I know is this is a serious problem that really needs to be dealt with not ignored because it leads to illegal abortions and suicide.

As the African National Congress (ANC) slogan so well puts it; “TOGETHER WE CAN DO MORE”. Let us not turn a blind eye, but act and save our nation.