Too many rights? Women’s reproductive freedom in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

This article explores the contestations over the legislation and enactment of sexual and reproductive rights in South Africa. The rights to free, quality sexual and reproductive health and rights are inscribed in the Constitution (1996) and within copious legislation and policy documents, yet their realisations remains elusive for much of the population. Teenage pregnancy is a particular node for controversy and public disapprobation in present-day South Africa. Public anxieties and opposition to teenage pregnancy relates, in complex ways, to broader suspicions about moral atavism among young women, in particular. There is a sense that the democratic transition has dismantled established modes of social regulation, resulting in a rupture in the social fabric and in concomitant social damage. This article explores two elements of this idea. Firstly, that the legislation of democratic freedoms has licensed sexual promiscuity among young women. Secondly, that this sexual promiscuity is related to other forms of profligate consumption among the ‘born free’ generation – those born after the first democratic elections in 1994. Based on seven years of qualitative research in the Eastern Cape as part of a study on post-apartheid youth, this article contrasts claims about the social damage brought about by the empowerment of women in the post-apartheid era, with the experiential accounts of young men and women themselves, as well as their older caregivers.