THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
CHAPTER 3 LITERATURE REVIEW
3.6. Abstinence, fidelity and faithfulness
(Source: Sunday Times (South Africa) of 19 July 2009)
Figure 1.4: An example of a newspaper report on the abuse of traditional circumcision
people can sustain secondary abstinence for a long period once they become sexually active (Ott, Pfeiffer & Fortenberry, 2006; Kabiru & Ezeh, 2007; Tumwesigye, Ingham & Holmes, 2008).
Because children mature faster and are more exposed to sex at a relatively young age, through various forms of the media (Kanuga & Rosenfeld, 2004; Collins, et al., 2004; Martino, et al., 2009), and because of the high level of infidelity in relationships among adults in the larger society, it is difficult to sell abstinence to youths. Young people are under immense pressure from peers, older men and women, poverty and the need to meet the demands to keep up with fashion and passion of a capitalist society. The false reliance of youths on condoms for protection against infection and pregnancy may also have contributed not just to the spread of HIV/AIDS but to the sustenance of the pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa. Secondary abstinence may not be particularly easy to sell to undergraduates as well, most of who were already sexually active before coming to the university.
Despite the difficulty in selling this strategy to people who have already started having sex, it is a strategy that could be sold to young children and adolescents within a sexuality education curriculum and reinforced by community involvement. The USA has adopted an ‘abstinence – only sexuality education’ for about two decades, however, the success has been questionnable.
The findings reflect no significant impact on teen sexual activity and in rates of unprotected sex among adolescents (Trenhohm, et al., 2008). Delay of onset of sex until marriage or until a girl/boy is matured to understand the implications of giving up their chastity and accepting responsibility for such action is, however, a logical choice.
In reference to an article in a National periodical, Newsweek, by Noble in 1991 titled “There is no safe sex” the author made reference to the fact that condoms were not foolproof in preventing HIV infection. The author argued that the combination of abstaining from sex until marriage and fidelity in monogamy thereafter provides our only hope against the further spread of HIV. He suggested that abstinence and mutually faithful sexual relationship with uninfected persons are the only guaranteed methods of preventing the sexual transmission of HIV.
It took almost two decades later before the truth of Noble’s claim was established. Condom indeed has failed, particularly in Africa, to stem the spread of the HIV and AIDS pandemic. This submission agrees with the position of the South African Bishops Conference on July 30, 2001 (Southern Cross) titled “A message of hope”. The call from the Bishops was simple:
“Abstinence is the only way”. The Bishops insisted that the only answer to overcoming AIDS and build up a new, happy, and healthy South Africa, Botswana, and Swaziland was to abstain from sex before marriage and be faithful to one’s spouse in marriage. The Bishops gave four bases for their position: condoms go against human dignity, condoms change the beautiful act of love into a selfish search for pleasure, condoms do not guarantee 100% protection against HIV/AIDS and condoms might even be one of the main reasons for the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Closely linked with abstinence is the issue of virginity, which is of cultural value to Africans. The Zulus have an extant long-standing custom of testing virginity in young girls. The attempt to resuscitate this culture in 2002 was met with criticism from the national press, as constituting
the abuse of the rights of the girls. The campaign of abstaining from sex before marriage from the Church is not incongruent with this cultural practice. Maintaining virginity until marriage keeps girls free from contact with people with HIV, reduces or restrains the girls from early sex, i.e. abstaining from sex until they are ripe for sex (at marriage or matured enough for them to appreciate the consequences of their action) and brings about self esteem and pride to the girls (Cullinan, 2001).
The African people are noted for their highest level of morality, family life, community life, sociability and solidarity. This is clearly demonstrated through the African way of communal lifestyle, where everybody is each other’s keeper and the protection and upbringing of youths are vested in the community. Sex is understood in the African society as sacred and its abuse is considered to be a threat to society. Western education and civilization have eroded into these age long order and now sex has been bastardised and what should be a channel of life has become a channel of death. In the Western part of Nigeria (where UNAD is located) and among the Zulu people (where UNIZULU is located), virginity was traditionally a thing of pride when a girl keeps away from sex until the first night of marriage. In essence there is no contradiction between Noble’s prescription, the Church’s teaching and the traditional practice about abstinence until marriage (among Africans). Poverty, the collapse of family life, permissiveness and mismanagement of civilization, individual rights and exploitation have contributed to the collapse of traditional and religious values.