‘Kasi curriculum’: what young men learn and teach about sex in a South African township

ABSTRACT

Sex education within the formal bounds of school curricula or clinic consultation is traditionally conceived as age-appropriate and accurate information, delivered by a sanctioned adult such as a nurse or teacher. This article explores another kind of curriculum – taught and learned among young men themselves in the kasi (township) in which they live. Findings are based on primary data gathered during interviews and research workshops with boys and young men (aged 14–22), including focus group discussions and participatory research exercises. In exploring young men’s sexual ideas, practices, hopes and fears, it focuses on three themes: (i) consent and coercion; (ii) pleasure and risk; and (iii) advice and authority. We examine diverse perspectives on these themes, and trace the tensions and ambiguities that surface within young men’s accounts. We focus in particular on contradictions between what is learned about sex through formal curricula, and what is learned through peers and older men, including within ulwaluko (a rite of passage of traditional initiation and circumcision for Xhosa men).

KEYWORDS:

• Young men
• sex education
• hegemonic masculinities
• participatory research methods
• sexual pleasure
• South Africa

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to study co-investigators, including Lucie Cluver, Beth Vale, Elona Toska, and other collaborators at the Universities of Cape Town and Oxford. A number of scholars have guided this work, including Mary Crewe, Deevia Bhana, Robert Morrell and Tamara Shefer. We are grateful for their advice, although any factual or interpretive errors are our own. We would also like to thank the editors of Sex Education, and the two anonymous reviewers who gave helpful and incisive feedback. Our principal thanks are to the study participants and their families.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Within these interviews and focus groups, ‘sex’ was understood as penetrative vaginal sex and accounts of same-sex sexuality, or conceptualisations of sex beyond vaginal penetration, did not emerge.

Additional information

Funding

Financial support was provided by Evidence for HIV Prevention in Southern Africa (EHPSA), a DFID programme managed by Mott MacDonald (MM/EHPSA/UCT/05150014), and by Johnson and Johnson. Lesley Gittings received additional support from the South African National Research Foundation Innovation scheme for doctoral student funding, the University of Cape Town’s AIDS and Society Research Unit (ASRU), and the South African Social Science and HIV (SASH) Programme, an initiative funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the US National Institutes of Health (Award #R24HD077976).