University scholarships for female South African students who stay virgins are unconstitutional and should be scrapped, a government commission has ruled, after a local municipality introduced the scheme earlier this year.
Late January, the Uthukela municipality in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) introduced the bursaries to reduce AIDS and child pregnancies.
16 students were awarded “maidens’ bursaries” on condition that they refrained from sex until they graduated.
An investigation by the Commission for Gender Equality concluded on Friday that the study grants were unlawful.
The commission ruled that a bursary “contingent on a female student’s virginity is fundamentally discriminatory”.
The scheme caused an uproar when it was unveiled earlier this year.
In a ruling made after rights groups referred the scheme to it, the commission said: “It goes against the ethos of the constitutional provisions in relation to dignity, equality and discrimination.”
“Virginity is not intrinsic to the task of studying,” it added.
One of the scholarship conditions was that during their holidays the students would be subjected to supposed virginity tests traditionally conducted by elderly women.
The municipality, which is in a socially conservative part of South Africa, has not yet commented.
The tests have been severely criticised by rights groups and dismissed by medical experts.
The commission has given the municipality 60 days to respond to its recommendation that the scheme should be closed, the AFP news agency reports.
The size of the grants varies, but can be worth several thousand dollars a year.
An estimated 6.3 million people in South Africa are HIV-positive, with more than one in 10 people living with the virus.
Teenage pregnancies are also on the rise in South Africa.
Municipality mayor Dudu Mazibuko told the AFP news agency in March that the scholarships were an effective way to curb the spread of HIV and control teenage pregnancies.
But women’s rights activists have condemned the initiative, arguing that not only it undermined civil liberties, but was also counter-productive and short-sighted in the larger struggle against HIV/AIDS in the country.
