Nawaal Deane and Ntuthuko Maphumulo Statistics show that over the past 15 years South African youth have been having sex at an increasingly younger age. Of sexually experienced children polled in the Beyond Awareness Campaign survey, 10% said they had had their first sexual experience at or below the age of 11 years. In the Eastern Cape, 22% of the youth first had sex at the age of 11. The comparative figures for sex below the age 11 in the other provinces were KwaZulu-Natal, 14%; Western Cape, 1%; Gauteng, 11%; Northern Cape, 2%; and Northern Province, 7%. As many as 25% of respondents in KwaZulu-Natal and 35% in the Eastern Cape had had sex by the age of 13 years, the report said.
Gauteng and Western Cape youth were the least likely to have more than one sexual partner, with KwaZulu-Natal having double the rate of respondents with concurrent sexual partners as the other provinces. On a national scale 42% reported having had sex for the first time at or below the age of 15 years. There is a difference between girls and boys, with girls tending to become sexually active at an older age. The report notes: “It is puzzling to imagine what might be the nature of sexual intercourse [between people] below the age of 11 years and how these respondents became sexually active.” A major survey conducted in 1998 by the makers of Durex condoms found that South African youngsters are “pretty much with the global average when it comes to ‘losing it’ with ages of first sex at 17,3 years”. The report found that 55% of South Africans did not use any contraception in their first sexual encounters.