Hip-hop anthems pound, coloured lights flash and hundreds of teenagers scream as two young men stride onto the stage.
”We’ve come all the way to tell you guys how great sex can be,” they yell into the microphone, drawing whoops of delight from the crowd gathered in Eldorado Park.
But they don’t mean any old sex, they mean married sex. And this isn’t a raunchy extravaganza for hormonal teenagers, it’s part of a drive to get millions of youngsters in Aids-hit South Africa to guard against HIV by vowing chastity.
The Christian-backed Silver Ring Thing abstinence campaign has already made headlines in the United States and Britain by using savvy, multimedia shows to urge thousands of teenagers to shun sex until they wed.
Now South Africans have launched their own version, with a pragmatic but urgent goal — to help tackle one of the world’s highest rates of HIV/Aids.
”The need in South Africa is absolutely incredible. People are dying every day,” 23-year-old Andrew Serfontein, a leader on the South African Silver Ring Thing team, told Reuters.
The movement has an unenviable remit: to make virginity cool, and to turn abstinence into a real choice for teenagers under pressure from peers and the media to have sex — lots of it — and to start young.
After bombarding teenagers with slick video clips and skits about the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases and the emotional consequences of having sex, the team urges them to buy silver rings that symbolise a pledge to abstain until marriage.
”The world is saying everyone is doing it,” 22-year-old Dee Mokoka tells the teenagers in Eldorado Park. ”But that’s a lie — I’m not doing it and you don’t have to.”
‘Can a condom protect your heart?
The Silver Ring Thing says promoting contraception sends mixed messages. Its presentation is virulently anti-condom, usually the first weapon in Africa’s war against HIV/Aids.
”I’m sick of the word condom,” shouts team member Buck Matyila (20) during the show. ”Can a condom protect your heart? Can a condom protect your mind? Can a condom protect your virginity? So are condoms safe?” ”No!” yell the teenagers, as they snatch free T-shirts being hurled from the stage.
Many in South Africa question the wisdom of an abstinence only message in a country where one in nine people are infected with HIV. Some say it is unrealistic and downright dangerous.
”Young people are exposed to media that is very sexual, and they are going through a developmental phase where they might want to experiment, and they need to know how to protect themselves,” said Aadielah Makur, senior manager of Soul Buddyz, a health education programme for children.
”We wouldn’t advocate an abstinence only programme.”
After the rousing Friday night show, most teenagers at the Silver Ring Thing event in Eldorado Park were eager to sign up for a ring. But sceptics wonder how many actually stick to the vow, despite follow-up text messages and e-mails.
Activists say campaigns that emphasise virginity risk piling guilt on those forced or coerced into sex, a serious problem in a country where older men often prey upon young girls.
‘Phone call from God’
But even critics of the Silver Ring Thing acknowledge that despite the ABC (Abstain, Be faithful, Condomise) message touted throughout Africa to combat HIV/Aids, not enough emphasis has been placed on delaying sex, in South Africa at least.
”There may have been an emphasis on condoms, but people have just been glib with the abstinence part,” said Soul Buddyz’ Makur. ”We need to help young people unpack what it means to abstain and delay their first sexual experience.”
Christian minister Elvis Mvulane, who runs the Silver Ring Thing in South Africa, started preaching abstinence after scores of young people from his congregation in the country’s biggest black township, Soweto, started dying of HIV/Aids.
When a minister friend called Mvulane to talk about starting an abstinence programme he said it was ”like getting a phone call from God”.
Mvulane argues thousands of campaigns telling young people to wear a condom have failed and that if South Africans want to halt HIV and save the next generation they must simply have less sex with fewer people.
While the Silver Ring Thing has come under fire in the United States for using tax dollars to promote evangelical Christianity, few in largely Christian South Africa fret about the religious content, especially if it yields results.
”It is unreal to see parents burying their children,” Mvulane said. ”For us this was an intervention to stop our young people dying.”
Decked out in hipster jeans and funky accessories, Edwina Van Rooyen (15) and her friends chatter excitedly after the show in Eldorado Park as they wait to buy the simple silver ring they plan to wear until their wedding day.
”It’s really difficult to abstain from sex, especially with all the peer pressure, but I value my life and I wouldn’t want to get HIV,” Van Rooyen said. – Reuters