Unlike many other countries, South Africa offers educational opportunities for teenage mothers. Carol Kaufman F ive years ago, the Republic of South Africa began intensively dismantling apartheid. Fertility in South Africa has been steadily declining and now averages 3.3 births per woman, the lowest rate in sub-Saharan Africa.
Contraceptive use is common in some areas and rare in others.
And South Africa has the world's fastest rising rate of AIDS infections. Carol Kaufman, a Council researcher whose initial work in South Africa analyzed contraceptive use by black women under apartheid, is now involve d in three projects there, in collaboration with local and international colleagues. Contraceptive use patterns among black South African women Kaufman's analysis showed that use in the late 1980s varied with levels of community development in the highly segregated homeland areas and with the numbers of absent male migrant workers. Women with partners in labor migration and women who remained in the homelands, she found, were particularly disadvantaged in access to appropriate contraceptive services. A second important finding was that pregnant girls were permitted to return to school after childbearing, an opportunity often disallowed by other countries in the region.