Virginity and virtue: African masculinities and femininities in the making of teenage sexual cultures

Abstract

In KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, the ways in which teenage Africans construct sexuality is imbued with high cultural value that honours virginity and female respectability. Of what significance, do the cultural practices that endorse chastity and virginity play in the lives of 16- turning 17-year-old teenage Africans in a township context of KwaZulu-Natal? By drawing on focus-group discussions with teenage men and women, this article explores the saliency of virginity and cultural constructs in African teenage men and women’s account of sexuality. The article argues that African teenagers’ defence of virginity is grounded in and inspired by deep cultural connections and is an important resource to claim respectability, status and an identity. Both teenage men and women centred on and idealized virginity and respect. In doing so their meanings weave into gendered patterns of inequalities. Implications that take heed of local cultural patterns in construction of teenage sexualities are discussed in the conclusion.

Keywords

African teenagers culture respect South Africa virginity

Nkosi (boy): I prefer girls who go to umhlanga … because they stay true to themselves.

Nonjabulo (girl): Know what you want in future, and respect your cultures. I respect my culture.

(Single-sex focus-group discussions with teenage Africans, aged 16–17, in Inanda High School, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa)

In the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, the setting for this study, the cultural practice of umhlanga amongst the Zulu majority is grounded in and imbued with a social value that honours virginity. During umhlanga, which is celebrated annually at the Royal Reed Dance in Nongoma in the north of the province, young women and girls (exclusively virgins¹) between the ages of 8 and 25, dress in imvuluno, traditional Zulu attire, and carry a reed, symbolizing their virginity, which they present to the king – a ceremonial position currently held by King Zwelithini. The social value placed on virginity has a historical and material basis and derives from culturally embedded notions of respect or hlonipha (Harrison, 2008). Hunter (2010) argues that whilst cultural practices are contested and changeable, hlonipha still has currency today and is mobilized around male power that regulates female sexuality and emphasizes the importance of respectable feminine conduct and virginity.

Drawing on teenagers’ accounts of sexuality, this article explores the significance of cultural practices endorsing chastity and virginity in the lives of 16–17-year-olds in a KwaZulu-Natal township. An examination of teenage sexual cultures is especially significant in the context of the AIDS pandemic. In KwaZulu-Natal the incidence of HIV amongst the 15–24-year-old age group is estimated at 12% and women are five to six times more likely to be infected than men of the same age (HSRC, 2014). Teenage pregnancy is also a concern. Statistics South Africa (2013) reports that some 4.9% of females in the 13–19-year-old age group were reported to be pregnant in 2012. In 2010, KwaZulu-Natal province recorded the highest number of teenage pregnancies in the country with 17,260 girls attending school found to be pregnant (Department of Education, 2010). Critical research focusing on the gendered, social and structural factors that create such disparities has gone some way to explaining these patterns (Bell and Aggleton, 2014). Indeed, numerous studies across the continent have described the complex social processes through which gender inequality and gendered patterns of organization are produced, particularly in distressed economies (Groes-Green, 2013; Swidler and Watkins, 2007).

Yet, to date, there has been insufficient focus on African teenage constructions of sexuality and virginity (Bhana and Pattman, 2011; Harrison, 2008). In KwaZulu-Natal, while culture is challenged, contradictory and changing, it is also vigorously defended, reflecting not only the importance traditional gendered ordering still holds in contemporary society, but also the centrality of claims to Zulu masculinity and femininity (George, 2008; Wickstrom, 2010). Bhana (2014), for example, notes that the sexual cultures of Zulu teenagers, despite contemporary influences, remain embedded within and governed by notions of male and female respectability (hlonipa). Other researchers in South Africa have suggested that cultural patterns, which maintain gender roles and expectations, render women and girls particularly vulnerable to violence and HIV (Jewkes and Morrell, 2012). These cultural ideals create an imperative that reproduces and reinforces notions of male power. Indeed, it is argued that entrenched cultural ideals of masculinity within depressed economies lead to violence against women and girls (Shefer, 2014).

This article draws on findings from a larger qualitative study titled ‘16 turning 17: youth, gender and sexuality in the context of HIV and AIDS’. The study focused on this age group because under South African law the age for consensual sex at the time of the study was 16. It is also an age when relationship dynamics are often a central focus in young people’s lives. The study aimed to identify how teenagers in different race and class contexts give meaning to gender and sexuality. Understanding how teenage sexualities are constituted within local contexts has important implications for HIV prevention and young people’s sexual health.

Through exploring the significance of virginity, this article shows how teenage men and women engage with cultural expressions of respectability (hlonipha). Nkosi and Nonjabulo, quoted at the beginning of this article, articulated how umhlanga shapes contemporary teenage sexual cultures, which is suffused by notions of respectability (hlonipha). Hlonipha is rooted in traditional values in which a gendered ordering of relations is inherent. Both umhlanga and virginity testing produce ideals of respectability and chastity. Teenage women who embody respectability and virginity, as Bhana and Anderson (2013) suggest, evoke respect and recognition in others. The African teenagers in this study were no exception. Prominent in their accounts of sexuality were culturally prescribed notions of female chastity and virginity, which simultaneously sought to establish respectability whilst reproducing gendered asymmetries of power. As Harrison’s (2008) study of young adults in rural KwaZulu-Natal indicates, the social construction of teenagers’ sexuality is embedded within complex historical and cultural processes as well as contemporary appropriations of tradition which include sexual and gendered ideologies centred on good conduct. Valuing and subscribing to cultural imperatives such as umhlanga that enmeshed both young men and women produced gender relations of inequalities.

Understanding the social construction of young people’s sexuality requires attention to contemporary cultural continuities and how they are mediated and negotiated. Such understandings provide rich insights for intervention strategies aimed at protecting young people’s sexual health, especially in a context where culture plays a pivotal role in sustaining gender power inequalities within relationship dynamics, and often acts as a barrier to disease prevention (Harrison and Sullivan, 2010). As Harrison (2008) argues, it is imperative that serious attention is given to the cultural continuities in teenage Africans’ accounts of sexuality. Such an approach, while epistemologically marginal, is crucial to developing culturally sensitive approaches to disease prevention and sexual risk (George, 2008).

Contextualizing virginity, gender and culture in KwaZulu-Natal

The notion of virginity is highly valued in many contexts beyond KwaZulu-Natal townships, shaped by patriarchal control and the regulation of female sexuality (Valenti, 2009). In KwaZulu-Natal, virginity ideals have historically been linked to cultural notions of respect (hlonipha) and ilobolo (bride-wealth). As many studies have found, female purity and virginity have always been key to the negotiation of bride-wealth, a practice that continues today (Rudwick and Posel, 2014; Wickstrom, 2010). Virginity thus serves a dual function of securing more bride-wealth cattle or cash – fulfilling the patriarchal bargain – and enabling greater pride and dignity, which is entwined with hlonipha and the essence of being Zulu (Hunter, 2010).

Historians suggest that in pre-colonial times there was relative openness about sexual issues (Delius and Glaser, 2002). Teenage years were recognized as highly sexualized and teenage sexual relations were permitted as long as they did not lead to pregnancy before marriage. Non-penetration in the form of thigh sex (ukusoma) was widely practised to prevent pregnancy (Hunter, 2010). Virginity testing was regarded as a way to control and manage teenagers’ sexuality and avert negative outcomes while simultaneously increasing the value of bride-wealth (Wickstrom, 2010). However, Christian notions of sex transformed the meaning of hlonipha and sexuality. Similarly, while a relative openness had previously operated in relation to sexual experimentation and discussion with teenagers, Christianity engendered a context where sexuality was considered taboo and all forms of sexual experimentation were frowned upon (Delius and Glaser, 2002).

Changes in the political economy, migrant labour, urbanization and disruptions to family life led to changes in gender and sexual relations. There were new possibilities for both young men and women to engage in sexual relations outside of wedlock and, as a result, different understandings of the importance of virginity emerged. Jewkes and Morrell (2012) argue that a toxic form of hypersexual masculinity, particularly in township settings, arose out of the oppressive social conditions induced by apartheid and changing cultural patterns. In other words, cultural patterns about virginity were challenged, and have remained in constant flux, with gender power relations operating in complex and multi-faceted ways.

In contemporary KwaZulu-Natal, cultural notions of virginity, in which pride, dignity and respect are central, are still valued, despite being heavily contested (Rudwick and Posel, 2014). In a context of social upheaval, cultural practices such as umhlanga become an important way of forging identity and strengthening notions of Zulu-ness, while simultaneously reproducing gender relations and inequalities. Umhlanga has thus become a key symbolic, cultural and discursive strategy through which respectability is mapped out and through which gender and sexual relations are forged.

Virginity testing is conducted regularly in townships across the province, where young women and girls are tested by an umhloli – a woman who has learnt the techniques of inspecting for the presence of the hymen. Indeed, in recent years, testing has seen a revival and has become almost a ritualized celebration of virginity, particularly as there are concerns about teenage women’s vulnerability to HIV (George, 2008; Vincent, 2006; Wickstrom, 2010). In the context of HIV and teenage pregnancy, virginity testing is used to foster teenage women’s sexual responsibility and to encourage them to avoid sex. The contradiction, however, is that sexual restraint in the context of coercive sexual practices and male dominance within intimate partner dynamics means that avoiding sex and protecting virginity might be very difficult for teenage women (Jewkes and Morrell, 2012). Nevertheless, emphasizing virginity and virginity testing is often seen as vital if young women are to assert their power in precarious social and sexual contexts (George, 2008). In other words, female virginity is an assertion of female power and agency through which status as a Zulu woman is upheld.

Virginity testing is mired in controversy and is often viewed as a debate between rights advocates and traditionalists (George, 2008). These debates are well established and rehearsed. The purpose of this article is not to rehash them, but to analyse, instead, how teenagers engage with cultural expressions about virginity and respect, expressions through which masculinities and femininities are produced. Briefly however, the virginity testing debate is a clash between traditional values that emphasize sexual abstinence, secure bride-wealth and assert Zulu identity and the rights advocates who maintain that virginity testing is a violation of human dignity and gender equality. In the latter argument, women and girls who participate in (or are victims of) virginity testing are often viewed as oppressed by cultural agencies of socialization, under heavy pressure to submit to cultural prescriptions in the social order (George, 2008). In other words, young women are often seen as victims, forced by social pressure to comply with established hierarchies and cultural scripts. A sexual double standard operates as young men are not expected to prove their virginity (Bhana and Anderson, 2013). Women and girls who do not comply are often stigmatized. The argument is that virginity testing reinforces male domination and female subservience (Valenti, 2009), and women and girls who willingly participate are complicit in their own subordination.

Complicating this picture, George (2008) moves beyond the dichotomous positioning of rights versus culture. Instead of locking virginity testing within these debates George argues that culture is contested and fluid and that it is thus important to see how virginity testing as a cultural practice is adaptable, that it may be used, for example, in promoting health and gender equality. In the context of the HIV pandemic as an enormous public health crisis in South Africa, George’s argument is that both rights advocates and traditionalists should be more appreciative of and responsive to umhlanga, recognize that culture is constantly in flux, and work together with the common goal of securing better health outcomes for young people.

Research methods

There were 44 focus-group discussions held with teenagers in schools in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. In total 10 schools were selected on the basis on their geographical locations and they reflect the widespread variations of race and class in the province. The purpose of the discussions was to elicit expressions of sexuality as perceived and articulated by African teenagers, aged between 16 and 17. In this article I focus on one school in a township context called Inanda High. The school was chosen because the demographic profile of the school was predominantly black African within a poverty-stricken context.

The teenagers who participated in the study all came from backgrounds where the main sources of household income were from state old-age pensions, child support grants and remittances from migrant workers. They lived in poor housing with a lack of sanitation and poor drainage. Food was generally scarce and family life was unstable due to migrant work and unemployment. The teenagers’ personal circumstances varied although all were poor and came mainly from female-headed households that relied on child support grants. All were Christians although traditional cultural practices were interwoven with their Christian beliefs.

Access to the school was approved both by the school principal and the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education. At Inanda High, nine focus-group discussions were conducted. Six were single sex (three with teenage men and three with teenage women) and three were mixed-sex group discussions. The reason for holding both single-sex and mixed-sex groups was premised on the understanding that gender relations are key to the construction of identity and how teenagers reflected upon and talked about sexuality was negotiated and mediated through the context of the group. There were six teenagers in each focus group, which ran for approximately 90 minutes.

Teachers assisted by distributing a document to their students outlining the research. Teenagers who volunteered to participate in the study returned signed consent forms to the teachers. The teachers were asked not to influence students in their choice to participate or not. The final selection at Inanda High was based on teenagers’ willingness to participate, the accurate completion of consent forms and whether participants were available during non-school hours. The participants all knew each other as they were in the same grade at the school.

The focus groups at Inanda High school were conducted by the author in English. The sessions were audiotaped and transcribed. Discussions centred on what it was like to be a teenager in Inanda, and key to this were the ways in which they understood teenage relationship dynamics. The research was geared to addressing teenagers as experts and authorities on their own relationship and gender dynamics and sexuality, and to encourage them to set the agenda according to their own priorities. These were then discussed during the sessions. General themes were covered in the sessions, including discussions about friendships, relations with peers and adults, boyfriends and girlfriends, heterosexual desires and notions of love, as well as their future goals. How these were addressed differed in different groups depending on the participants’ own priorities and how they engaged with the issues. The focus on virginity arose because it was an issue the teenagers’ found particularly important.

There are certain limitations with focus group discussions that may preclude discussions diverging from the socially accepted direction governed by the group’s own dynamics. This is especially the case when sensitive issues such as virginity are discussed. Participants in this study were not selected because they were sexually active and, indeed, their right to privacy and the embarrassment – especially for school-going teenagers – could motivate participants to deny sexual activity. Whilst the majority of the teenage women supported cultural values that believed in the importance of virginity, there were exceptions. Individual interviews and ethnographies would doubtlessly have yielded divergent data although it must be noted, as Maharaj and Cleland (2012: 105) argue, that in ‘nearly all studies of sexual lifestyles, the value of the study depends on the reliability of self-reported behaviour’. A further limitation to the research in this article was that the sample was small and drawn from only one geographical area. However, the article does not seek to generalize but rather to report on teenage sexuality within a specific context, which informs a broader project on teenage sexuality in South Africa.

The study followed due ethical processes, which included voluntary participation and confidentiality. The ethics review of the study took place at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Pseudonyms are used throughout the article to protect anonymity and teenagers were informed that they had the right to withdraw from the study at any point. Data were analysed by the author using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) system of thematic coding. First, thematic coding involved reading through the entire data set and identifying themes. The next phase of analysis involved the production of different codes, where potential patterns were highlighted. These codes were matched with the data extracts after which a thematic map was drawn and contradictions noted. The themes were further checked in relation to the whole data set and refined with careful attention to congruence between the data extracts and the analytical claims. The specific focus of this article is on themes generated in the single-sex focus-group discussions where virginity and cultural expressions of sexuality were prominent. Data analysis software was not used in this study.

‘I prefer girls who go to umhlanga.’ Teenage masculinities and the defence of virginity

When teenage men were asked questions about their relationships with teenage women, their answers focused heavily on good female conduct underpinned by chastity and submission to cultural norms. By drawing on traditional cultural norms, teenage men delineated specific sexual and gendered conduct for ‘well behaved’ young women based on virginity and sexual passivity:

Nkosi: Yes. I prefer girls who go to umhlanga … because they stay true to themselves.

Sibonelo: Because those girls are well behaved, well behaved, and she’s, she’s still a virgin.

Philani: And she respects her body.

Nkosi: She knows what’s wrong and right. Yes, and she knows what’s expected in future with – with her life. She knows exactly what she wants in life. There are those who just get a boy and sleep and move on and just sleep, but this one knows exactly what she wants. She can stay a virgin until she gets married, yes, that’s why – that’s why I think I prefer the one who goes to umhlanga.

In the discussion, teenage men drew on culturally embedded notions of gender to extol female respectability, virginity and good sexual conduct. Intentionally or not, this was a way of regulating female sexuality and masculine and cultural norms thus worked towards reproducing hierarchies of gender. In contrast to girls who ‘sleep and move on’ those girls who practice umhlanga were accorded greater status and power, and were described as having the ability to differentiate ‘wrong’ from ‘right’. Pride and dignity was thus validated, female sexuality regulated and male power assured. Within such a patriarchal context, female virginity is associated with male prestige that emphasizes the sexual double bind. By aligning their ideas and understandings to cultural definitions and practices that give status to virgins, teenage men normalize their own masculine sexual entitlements whilst regulating teenage women’s sexuality and reproduce the sexual double standards. Whilst teenage men use cultural scripts to idealize virginity and umhlanga they are also negotiating their sexual identities as Zulu men – and at the same time are reinforcing Zulu cultural practices.

Teenage men position themselves within gendered and traditional discourses by giving status to a girl who is a virgin until ‘she gets married’. Teenage women are also expected to plan ahead: ‘she knows what’s expected in future with – with her life. She knows exactly what she wants in life …’ The responsibility for ensuring and protecting her virginity thus rests with the teenage woman. It is useful to examine the double standard evident here in the context of research in South Africa illustrating teenage women’s struggle to fulfil such a responsibility. For example, research has found that women are often unable to negotiate condom use (Jewkes and Morrell, 2012), and that they are usually the less powerful within relationship dynamics (Bhana and Anderson, 2013). The high HIV infection rates amongst teenage Africans in KwaZulu-Natal confirm women’s gendered and sexual vulnerability.

The articulation of sexual double standards is not new (Ringrose et al., 2013). Teenage men use culture strategically to give power and respectability to virginity in a context where masculine sexual prowess is normative. It was teenage women in townships in particular who were scorned as ‘rude’, who liked ‘fashion’, who went ‘clubbing’, drank alcohol and were described as having poor sexual morals:

Sibonelo: Maybe she will get drunk and then will sleep – sleep with a man in the club. You never know. Then, when they get drunk, there’s no thinking, there’s no one thinking to use a condom.

Thabiso: They always sleep [have sex] and have fun, so if some of them have HIV, then …

Nkosi: Then when she gets back to you she decides to have sex with you, and say you trust her and you don’t have a condom, you – you wasn’t expecting to have sex with her, it just happens and then that happens. At the end of the day, you [are] the one who will be affected, because you [are] the one who will get these diseases from her … When she finds out, she will tell you that you are the one who – who gave her the disease [emphasis added].

The teenage men in this study accrue power from cultural dividends which expect unmarried females to be virgins whilst regarding their own sexual activity as unproblematic. Teenage women in the township were generally condemned as lacking respectability, being drunk and having no care for practising safe sex. They were portrayed as just out to have fun and thus responsible for spreading HIV. By drawing on cultural norms the teenage men were able to view these women as lacking hlonipha while their own place in the cultural moral hierarchy remained secure – indeed was taken for granted. The cultural boundary of acceptable sexuality for teenage women and men reproduces male power.

Cultural boundaries, however, are never static but are shifting and fluid. Nkosi talks about having sex without a condom, highlighting both female and male sexual agency. ‘She decided to have sex with you’ is an indication that teenage women do act on their desires. Sex is far from exclusively in the domain of sexual violence and coercion. Sex, as Nkosi states, is also spontaneous, with both men and women acting together on their desires. However, according to these respondents, during the sexual encounters they were referring to, sexual responsibility was diminished and women were blamed for the spread of HIV.

Teenage women who went clubbing were also seen as doing damage to their reputations:

Sibonelo: Those girls amaqola [gold-diggers] … they like clubbing. Amagigi [virgins], they don’t … Boys want to have sex with a girl who’s a virgin because they say a virgin is very – [it] is very cool when they have sex with a virgin.

Differentiated forms of femininity were produced in which amaqola were vilified and amagigi honoured. Virgins were contrasted to gold-diggers. As far as the teenage men in the focus-group discussions were concerned a woman’s femininity became compromised when she was seen not only as having loose morals and sleeping around but also as being a ‘gold-digger’ – which was perhaps also a comment on teenage men’s economic vulnerability. Bhana and Pattman (2011) for instance, in their study of teenage sexualities, pointed out that teenage men are negotiating their sexual entitlement in a context where they are unable to provide and support teenage women, many of whom may prefer men with money. In the Southern African context, Swidler and Watkins (2007) argue that women’s preference for men with money or, indeed, transactional sex, should be understood as a survival strategy where poor women exchange sex for money and gifts. Going beyond basic survival, transactional sex enables women to access elusive modern lifestyles, and this, some studies have argued, leads to relationships based on money and gift cultures becoming more widespread (Groes-Green, 2013). It is important to note, therefore, that teenage men are drawing on cultural expressions of virginity in a context where they cannot afford to participate in transactional sex and provide for ‘gold diggers’. They can, however, deploy the cultural and gendered norms to inform their masculine sexual power:

Nkosi: Ja, he – let’s say he have sex with a girl who was – who was – don’t have any experience, amagigi. It’s where she will get an experience of how to have sex.

Sibonelo: … I think boys want girls to know how to have sex.

Nkosi: But at the end of the day the boys want to marry virgins.

Thabiso: But what I think is that the boys want the girls to have only sex with him and not with many boys …

Nkosi: But the fact is that at the end of the day if they decide to get married they want a fresh one.

Nkosi’s argument is that having sex with amagigi allows men to give virgins experience. The equation of masculinity with sexual prowess is thus upheld whilst femininity is associated with chastity. The contradictions and the ebb and flow of power in teenage male expressions of sexuality are clear. Whilst virginity is idealized until marriage, teenage men emphasize male sexual entitlement in their desire to have sex with virgins. They see their power as being male sexual conquerors who can give virgins experience with sex. Sex is a boost to masculine status, but for women sex is damaging and an assault on their presumed virtue. Having sex is permissible for teenage men but women suffer damage to their reputations because at the ‘end of the day’ men want ‘fresh ones’ (virgins). The appropriation of cultural norms thus reproduces gender inequalities and sexual double standards, providing opportunities for the demonstration of male power whilst denigrating teenage women who, within this trope, are seen to lack respectability or to be ‘gold diggers’. By doing so teenage men downplay their emasculation in the material domain, shifting the negativity to teenage women who seek money that they, as impoverished young school-going teenage men, cannot provide.

‘Umhlanga is a good thing’. Teenage women claiming culture, respectability and gender identity

Whilst cultural norms of umhlanga provided teenage men with an opportunity to regulate female sexuality whilst simultaneously signifying their identities as Zulu men, the focus group discussions found that teenage women also appropriate cultural norms as a resource to inform their femininities. In this way gender relations are shaped and the ‘essence’ of what it means to be Zulu is reclaimed and valorized:

Zamo: I think u-culture, umhlanga, is a good thing because some of the boys are respecting you … because you – you’re a virgin …

Sne: … I have a friend who is a boy. He used to encourage me that I must wait, I must remain as a virgin so that I will get a good husband, and he was – he always told me that he loves a wife who’s a virgin, who was doing good since she was young.

Instead of seeing culture as a catalyst for some form of oppressive organization within gender relations, teenage women chose to embrace cultural systems that valorized virginity and respectability as a way of gaining the respect of others. Yet these systems are clearly contradictory. On one hand, virginity desexualizes teenage women while the idealization of umhlanga is achieved through the ‘sexualization’ of boys and the heterosexual ideal of a good future husband. Cultural capital is gained for girls who submit to umhlanga. They are desired, desirable and pursued. The focus-group discussions found that teenage women actively appropriated these cultural ideas that served to desexualize them:

Zama: You shouldn’t have friends who love – who love boys …

Sne: I think you must have friends of your age who will not – not talk about sex, who talk about the good things in future, and commit yourself – [to] the old people who have just reached their goals, who will always encourage you that you must wait until this time comes. You’ll get married, you’ll get a good job, a man is nothing in your life. I think you must do that.

Zimasa: I think we should involve ourselves with good friends who are attending church, who go to umhlanga …

Sne: I believe in umhlanga because the umhloli, the mothers there, they told us that when you get married, when you are a virgin that wedding is a blessing from God.

The management and regulation of respectable femininities was thus aligned to a non-sexual identity. Umhlanga was seen as a powerful cultural resource for realizing and maintaining respectable femininities. In theory this meant women had to distance themselves from girlfriend-boyfriend relationships, older men, and other teenage women who had boyfriends or who spoke about and showed interest in sexual activities. Practising and engaging with umhlanga and attending church were also key to maintaining good femininities.

Whilst the teenage women did not advertise publicly that they were virgins, the investment of time in cultural practices and the church were assumed to provide this status. Wearing the traditional dress, imvuluno, especially when attending the regular virginity testing in the township, was a visible exhibition to the community of their status as virgins. However, as it will be illustrated later, the regulation of female sexuality was not infallible.

Presenting themselves as virgins did not mean that women did not imagine romance and love, or think about and enjoy heterosexual friendships, but these were regulated by a non-penetrative sexual discourse where sexual activity was described as including kissing, hugging, being together and having fun. Practising umhlanga and attending church were regarded as protecting virginity and a non-sexual identity. As Scorgie (2002:62) indicates, an embodied integrity was of great social and cultural value. Through it, gender and the traditional ordering of relations were achieved.

On another level, Zimasa (quoted earlier) combined umhlanga with her Christian beliefs. While Christianity has made its mark on teenage sexuality in South Africa (Delius and Glaser, 2002), it has not replaced indigenous customs but, as noted by Harrison (2008), has become interwoven within contemporary teenage sexual cultures. As a result, virginity and Christian beliefs are central in the construction of sexual taboos and the desexualization of young women who are urged to believe, at age 16, that a man is ‘nothing in your life’. Such identity constructions sit comfortably with Zulu cultural expectations and provide status and symbolic power and integrity to those who value and support umhlanga. In adopting these constructions, teenage women signify their identities as respectable Zulu maidens.

Needless to say, not all teenage women submitted to these discourses, although in the focus-group discussions Kanye was the only one who openly resisted umhlanga:

Kanye: Mam, I don’t believe in virginity testing because those things they say there, my parents told me them. My parents told me everything to fulfil my dreams and I do those things they said and I make them proud, so I don’t see the use of going to umhlanga.

Whilst many African teenage women have resisted the desexualization promoted by cultural expectations, this study has found that umhlanga and the underlying presumption of non-sexual identities was paramount in claims of status and power. In a context where material impoverishment and suffering are part of the reality of everyday township life, the disempowerment experienced is in part ameliorated by powerful assertions of gender based on cultural scripts. In going against the dominant representation of uncontrollable teenage sexual desires (Delius and Glaser, 2002) teenage women’s agency is also seen as submitting to culture. As Butler (1995) argues, teenage women’s agency is not freedom from cultural forces but a double-edged process through which the submission to cultural norms is necessary for the articulation of power and a claim to a particular identity.

Researcher: What’s good about a virgin?

Nomtha: Wow, so good, it makes your family proud of you because, to know that you are just saving yourself for a marriage …

The investment in virginity, beyond cultural idealization – and its acknowledgment by others – is connected to material gain in complex ways. When Nomtha says ‘saving yourself for marriage’ which ‘makes your family proud’ she draws attention to how the regulation of sexuality has material, cultural and gendered implications. ‘Saving yourself’, works in the interests of the bride’s family, who are able to negotiate and secure more cattle or cash. In the context of deep poverty, culture and materiality thus come together in the production of an idealization of virginity and expectation of material reward (Wickstrom, 2010). As Scorgie (2002: 62) argues in the context of embodied integrity, sexual abstinence is an end in itself and separate from its role in preventing teenage pregnancy or the spread of HIV. As with teenage men, young women appropriate cultural norms within a context of poverty with significant consequences for gender relations through which Zulu notions of masculinity and femininity are produced. While it can be argued that teenage women lack agency and reinforce sexual double standards based on female sexual passivity, the evidence from the focus-group discussions suggested that they approached umhlanga not as passive victims but in order to access power and claim a Zulu femininity in ways that asserted the power of their identities.

Sne: Even here in townships there are lot of girls who are virgins, it’s just that … people think that the girls from here are all doing the same thing, but it doesn’t work that way. You do what you want to do with your life. Nobody forces you to do what they want you to do.

Nomtha: Me, I’m doing the virginity testing, I’m still a virgin … In township there are the girls who do virginity testing. It’s not [true] that in township there – there is no virgins.

Lindiwe: I also agree with Nomtha, we are, as I am, I’m still a – I’m still a virgin. It’s not that people will force you to go for a virginity test, it’s just that people are seeing that township girls are not virgins anymore but they are wrong …

In response to questions about township women and virginity, teenage women vigorously defended their status as virgins calling forth notions of female respectability. They actively defended virginity and virginity testing, rejecting the notion of coercion in their decision to do so. ‘Township girls’, Lindiwe insisted, are virgins too. She was contesting the framing of township women as amaqola, defending their identities as chaste, respectable virgins. To defend umhlanga is to defend chastity and township women’s respectability, through which gender relations are shaped.

Related to umhlanga was the cultural practice of umemulo, a ceremony which indicates that a young woman is an adult and ready to accept a boyfriend and get married:

Nonjabulo: Know what you want in future, and respect your culture … Last year my parents decided to do umemulo and I agreed because that is part of my culture.

Fezeka: ‘Umemulo’ … you save yourself, your virginity, yes.

Zimasa: They slaughter a cow.

Sne: And they make ‘umqombothi’ [beer] … and they talk to the ancestors, to protect you, to show you the way, ja.

Umemulo reiterated and reinforced the cultural ideologies with which teenage women shaped their identities. Reference to and respect for the ancestors to show them the right path was embedded within notions of hlonipha, virginity and chastity. As Hunter (2010: 152) notes, cultural practices can in ‘certain circumstances be redirected so that a woman can position herself as a ‘good woman’ of pious, and thus marriageable, character’. The cultural idioms function to produce ‘good’ teenage women and in doing so these women are able to stake a claim as respectable and chaste, fulfilling idealized notions of ‘authentic’ Zulu maidens (Scorgie, 2002).

Yet contradictions were also apparent in relation to virginity and challenges about the authenticity of virginity status:

*Kanye: I think that a boy should go for anyone who he likes because like … those girls … [who] attend umhlanga they are not virgins … the daughter of X she was not a virgin when she was getting married, she was already sleeping with – with her husband. Like umhlanga is not really like, like a truth. Some, some girls they put – they put money in their private parts so that the mothers who test them, they – they take that money and say this is a virgin and this thing that people believe that umhlanga [a reed] breaks if you are not a virgin. It doesn’t break.

Zimasa: Some of the girls they put a thousand rands into their private parts and the mothers take those thousand …

Nonjabulo: … you are coming from a good family maybe your father is a chief, they [virginity testers] will lie because they don’t want a daughter of Chiefs not to be a virgin before marriage.

The idealization of virginity thus rests on notions of good conduct but there are striking contradictions. Kanye and Zimasa assert that the exchange of money could make a difference to who is certified a virgin. Apparent in the discussion is the differentiation between those who are seen as coming from ‘good families’, the custodians of culture, such as the chiefs, who also have economic capital, and whose daughters are expected to be virgins. Virginity and the practice of umhlanga are thus not uncontested. Indeed, some believe that umhlanga is ‘not really the truth’ about sexuality, prompting Kanye to suggest that a ‘boy should go for anyone’ not only those who attend umhlanga because there is no guarantee that umhlanga equates to chastity. Virginity certificates are thus not necessarily a credible indicator of virginity status. Importantly, Kanye’s statement that ‘boys should go for anyone’ contradicts the cultural practices that idealize virginity, showing fluidity within these beliefs, and within notions of virginity, gendered hierarchies, male sexual entitlements and female subordination.

Conclusion

This article has argued that cultural expressions that exalt virginity and respectability in African sexualities play a significant role in the production of teenage Zulu masculinities and femininities. Teenage men and women seek status and power through investment in and accommodation of these cultural ideals and practices that place a high value on teenage women’s chastity and respectability. Young women are particularly invested in claiming virginity status, which shapes their identity as Zulu maidens. Virginity is a cultural ideal, and virgins are desired and pursued by a desiring male gaze.

The findings in this study show how virginity and virginity testing are used as a bargaining tool in presenting an idealized cultural identity through which relations of power manifest. Both teenage women and men gain from the cultural currency circulating as virginity. For teenage women this means good conduct, chastity, respectability and the claim to Zulu femininity. The respect and acknowledgment of others, in relation to the pride and dignity that virginity represents, plays an important role in conceptualizations of gender identity, as does the idealization of marriage and the expectation of bride-wealth. However, gender and cultural dynamics are not static. Kanye’s resistance to virginity testing and other cultural practices suggests a counter point. Gender identities are fluid and changing, as are cultural practices. For teenage men unable to use material advantage as a claim to power, their Zulu masculinity becomes realizable through idealizing virginity conferring cultural status. Teenage men and women’s participation in and support for virginity and virginity testing is thus about drawing boundaries of respectability that simultaneously organize gender and sexual relations in a context where resources are scarce and where avenues for claiming power and status are limited.

If cultural patterns around virginity remain so prominent amongst teenagers what value does working with culture hold for the public health crisis affecting African teenage women in particular? What potential is there for working with cultural forms of sexuality education in relation to the power and force through which virginity is articulated by teenage South Africans? George (2008) suggests working with culture rather than against, especially in a context where teenage women’s sexual lives are precarious. Harrison (2008) argues however, that virginity testing restricts sexuality and reiterates gender inequalities rather than providing a climate for learning about sexual life. Indeed, while the young women in this study lauded virginity, it was also evident that teenage women often have little control within intimate partner relations (Jewkes and Morrell, 2012). It is evident, too, that umhlanga and the idealization of virginity play an important role – and, indeed, can be seen as the very essence of existence and of what it means to be Zulu (Rudwick and Posel, 2014). It is important to understand how underlying gender norms enable a context where virgins are highly valued and where teenage women in particular stand to lose, both in terms of their reputation and in relation to sexual and health risks (Valenti, 2009). Furthermore, if virginity ideals produce a context of a non-sexual identity, will it be possible to begin conversations with teenage women about sex and sexuality and their risks? The fact that both teenage men and women idealized virginity provides some possibilities that take cognisance of local and cultural contexts in thinking of interventions. As George (2008) and Harrison (2008) both recognize, culture is dynamic and open to change. Virginity and discussions about respect could be an ideal context to infuse with messages of gender equality that could broaden both teenage men and women’s sexual health options.

Footnotes

Funding

This work is based on the research supported wholly by the National Research Foundation of South Africa Grant Number (87732). Any opinion, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and therefore the NRF does not accept any liability in regard thereto.

Note

Deevia Bhana is the DST/NRF South African Research Chair (SARCHI) in Gender and Childhood Sexuality and Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She has published widely in the areas of gender, childhood, sexualities and schooling. Her most recent books are Childhood Sexuality and AIDS Education: The Price of Innocence (Routledge, 2016) and Under Pressure: The Regulation of Sexualities in South African Secondary Schools (Modjaji/Mathoko's Books, 2014).

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