Melissa Maphosa (20) from the Zama Zama informal settlement shares her story on teenage pregnancy while living in a disadvantaged community. Informal settlements in South Africa face several social ills with teenage pregnancy being one of them.

Such was the experience of a 20-year-old Melissa Maphosa of the Zama Zama informal settlement, west of Pretoria, who fell pregnant at the age of 19 shortly after completing her matric. Maphosa completed her matric in 2019 at the Daspoort secondary school, however, coming from a household with a single mother who didn’t earn much money, meant she could not study any further. I wanted to study law, but I didn’t have the money,” she said.“I got admission to Tuks, but I could not pursue my studies.

“Being judged was the hardest thing to deal with. People had a lot to say and it wasn’t nice things,” she said. “My best friend laughed at me for falling pregnant. I felt lonely.”The young mother said she had a lot of things going through her head – one of them was the option of terminating the pregnancy. She questioned whether she was ready to be a mother, or whether she was ready to conform to Shona customs and move in with her partner. Falling pregnant at a young age can be a traumatic and lonely experience.

Click here to view the full article; https://rekord.co.za/381544/teenage-pregnancy-a-social-ill-at-informal-settlements/