- Zelda Ann Hintsa emphasizes the need for stronger family and community support to combat the high rates of school dropouts and teenage pregnancies on the Cape Flats.
- Drawing from her own experience as a single mother, she highlights the importance of restoring family values and involving the community in raising children.
- Hintsa calls for an all-of-society approach to break the cycle of broken homes and provide guidance to the youth.
Community support around the strengthening of the family unit is the answer to the endemic of lost children on the Cape Flats.
Having been a young single mother herself, community worker Zelda Ann Hintsa says the support of her mother and aunts was the village she needed to be able to make the most of her situation.
“My two late brothers even took my son under their wing and they spoke to him as uncles, but also as a father figure.”
Single-parent homes
According to the 2021 General Household Survey, 45,5% of children live with both parents, 37,8% of children live with a single parent and 13,7% live with an external guardian in the Western Cape.
With school drop outs high on the Cape Flats, unemployment among youth and the continued increase in teenage pregnancies, Hintsa says the values of the family and community unit in raising children must be restored.
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“When I was growing up, the neighbour would come to my mother and say I was doing something wrong. And if I looked at the lady badly, my mother would check me. These days we don’t have that. And, some parents don’t want to hear anything about their children. But, beside the family support, there should also be community support. Maybe we can come together and talk about the challenges. Some don’t have the family support and single mothers are left to fend for themselves. We need community support groups, but besides the women, the men should also do it, too. To talk to the young boys,” she says.
Recognising responsibility
Working several jobs to support her son, Hintsa says she made the sacrifices required at the time, but it did not come without a price.
“I can remember when my boy was under nine, when he played soccer, and I held two jobs to support him.
she says.
This is a reality lacking among some single mothers, she says.
“As the older generation, we need to look out for them. As a single mother, I’m not going to look down on any other single mother, because I went through it myself. We suffer in silence. And we don’t know who to talk to. But I salute my mom and her friends for encouraging me to talk to them, but also giving me that guidance as to how to move on,” she says.
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The breakdown in the family unit is a contributor to girls as young as 12 years old becoming pregnant, she continues.
“People blame everyone else, but the question is what are we, as a family unit, going to do to teach those men and boys that they can’t just go and sleep with a girl, that they must take responsibility,” she says.
Teen pregnancy concerns
In a February release by the Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, concerns were raised about the economic consequences of teenage pregnancy in the country.
Former Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said the phenomenon of teenage pregnancy has devastating social and economic costs.
Dlamini-Zuma said.
Around one in four girls in the country fall pregnant before the age of 20.
South Africa recorded an estimated 150 000 girls between the age group of 10 and 19 years old falling pregnant in the 2022-’23 financial year.
“What is particularly disheartening is that individuals who became parents during this period were hardly teenagers, with some cases reported constituting statutory rape. The phenomenon of teenage pregnancy has devastating social and economic costs. Early pregnancy in South Africa forces many girls to drop out of school and trap others in a cycle of poverty and leaves most stigmatised by society for being teenage mothers or forced into early marriages,” Dlamini-Zuma said.
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Hintsa agrees that an all-of-society approach is needed to remedy this, but reiterates this must start at home.
“How do we also touch this topic of sex within our homes? It became easy for me because my mom took me aside and said, my child, this is going to start happening to you. And I respect that from my mother. But it’s a debate and I know some parents do feel uneasy talking about sex because nobody spoke to them about it. They had to learn the hard way,” she says.
Hintsa says while there are organisations working in the background, she encourages the government and locals to come together to assist in breaking the cycle of broken homes, by offering support to mothers, but also teaching the youth about not falling into the same cycle.
