Population explosion in KZN
These stats clearly demonstrate the importance of sex education.
![](https://images.caxton.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2013/05/Colleen-Haggard.jpg)
The mid-year population estimate by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) shows that KwaZulu-Natal’s population grew by 2,8 percent over the past year to 11,4-million which is higher than the national increase of 1,6 percent, to 57-million.
According to the report, the main reason for the differences in provincial population growth rates is urbanisation.
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The more urbanised, the lower the growth rate and the more rural, the higher the growth rate.
These stats clearly demonstrate the importance of sex education.
There are far too many teenage pregnancies – in many instances robbing both the mother and child of a better life.
On Tuesday this week a security officer was called to a house along the Mzimkhulu River in Port Shepstone. The homeowner had heard `strange’ noises coming from the back of his garden.
The area was searched but nothing was found. As they were leaving they heard the faint cry of a baby coming from a neighbouring property.
Miraculously, they found an infant with his umbilical cord still attached, in dense bush behind the neighbour’s property.
The shivering, barely alive baby was wrapped in a blanket and rushed to hospital.
The report went viral and social media went wild with vitriolic attacks on the mother.
The woman was condemned and branded heartless.
Society simply cannot accept that anyone could abandon a helpless newborn baby.
It is an abhorrent notion.
But before we go on a tirade we also need to consider that society’s ‘norms’ may have been a contributing factor to the mother concealing the birth.
She may have been a frightened teenager who was forced to give birth alone and in the dark. There are far too few, if any, institutions to assist women on the South Coast with unwanted pregnancies.
In the 21st century no child should be born unwanted.
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