It’s more a rape crisis than it is about teenage pregnancy

In December of 2019, we ventured out on a roadtrip to Mafikeng in the North West Province where we were to meet with teenage mothers who had agreed to share their stories with us. The interest to meet with these girls, whose identity we will keep anonymous here, was sparked by a number of schools reporting high rates of girls being pregnant in what seemed to be within a simultaneous timeframe. More specifically, it was the Parliamentary session where Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, was questioned about the number of pregnant school girls and she reported that 121,099 girls ages 10 to 19 had fallen pregnant within a 12-month period. Below is the breakdown by province and age categories of 10 to 14 years as well as those 15 to 19 years.