africatodayonline.blogspot.com -
QMI Agency
Mar 11, 2015
, Last Updated: 5:48 PM ET
South Africa's president is defending comments he made proposing teen parents be separated from their children until their studies are completed.
"Take them to Robben Island or any other island, sit there, study until they are qualified to come back and work," President Jacob Zuma said.
Robben Island, 7 km off the coast of Cape Town, was home to the apartheid-era prison where Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were incarcerated, including Zuma himself.
The opposition called on Zuma to apologize.
"The president has done an embarrassing and offensive disservice to the country's teenage pregnancy crisis and his government's role in addressing the socio-economic problems that underpin it," Democratic Alliance spokeswoman Phumzile van Damme said in a statement Wednesday.
"The president's comments are not only irresponsible but expose a deep-seated patriarchal thinking behind his words."
Zuma's office also issued a statement Wednesday, rejecting "attempts to distort" his comments and saying he didn't single out girls for criticism.
"(Zuma) was emphasising the need for teenagers to focus on their studies and said children should not be raising children," the statement says. "In his remarks he referred to both boys and girls."
