Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Swaziland Girls Celebrate End of Sex Ban - Yahoo! News

~~~~ "Africa's last Monarch" ,... "chastity rituals" ....
"obliging his family to forfeit a cow"........
Now this is not really Technopolitical , but worth a read none-the-less.
The cow part got me. ~~ TP


By THULANI MTHETHWA, Associated Press Writer
Swaziland Girls Celebrate End of Sex Ban - Yahoo! News

Thousands of Swazi girls Tuesday celebrated the end of a ban on sexual activity that had been imposed as a way to combat AIDS in one of the countries hit hardest by the epidemic.

King Mswati III, Africa's last absolute monarch, had reinstated the "umchwasho" chastity ritual for five years in 2001, banning sexual relations for girls younger than 18. But the move was ridiculed as old-fashioned and unfairly focused on girls — and the king himself was accused of ignoring it.

During the ban, Swazi girls were instructed to wear the scarves as a sign of their chastity. If an umchwasho girl was approached for sex by a man, she was expected to throw her tassels at his homestead, obliging his family to forfeit a cow..

Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press