Media Watch

Back off our culture-virgins

About 200 maidens yesterday showered their monarch, Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini, with praises for reviving virginity testing and "sticking to it even when it was criticised".

The bare-breasted maidens from Bufelsdraai outside Verulam, north of Durban, danced in jubilation after undergoing testing by qualified virgin inspectors. Those who passed were later awarded certificates for their purity.

Buthelezi backs virginity testing

Childline has put the brakes on Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s praise of virginity testing as a key factor in HIV prevention.

At the King Shaka day celebrations, Buthelezi congratulated King Goodwill Zwelithini on backing virginity testing, saying that the practice has helped to address HIV in Kwa-Zulu Natal (KZN) province.

But Buthelezi’s potentially controversial comment has not gone unchallenged.

The King’s speech: Focusing on the role of men

In his speech delivered at the weekend’s heritage day celebrations, Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini took an uncharacteristic and more welcome approach to HIV prevention messaging, focusing on men’s role in the epidemic.

The Sowetan covered the Shaka Day celebrations in Johannesburg and quoted Zwelithini as saying that HIV-positive men needed to stop spreading the virus. The king also advised that men should be faithful to one partner at a time.

Zulu Reed dance: virginity testing, purity (and prevention?)

While the Swazis are 'defending' their Reed dance virgins against “unscrupulous” men who aim to court and compromise them, the Zulu Reed dance is in a different, but related, pickle.

In a The New Age (TNA) article covering the weekend’s Zulu Reed dance, King Goodwill Zwelithini is quoted saying that many of the maidens in attendance were not virgins but had paid to secure fake certificates which said otherwise.

Some might scoff at the fact that the ever controversial virginity testing seems to be becoming a bit of a farce. But the heart of the matter is that virginity test or not, young women are having sex and possibly exposing themselves to HIV because abstinence is the lone arrow in their HIV prevention arsenal.