Beyond Love: Gender Power and Desire Amongst Young Africans

African teenage sexualities are often framed within the context of death, danger and disease with little attention to the affective investment young people make within relationship dynamics. In the context of HIV, sexual coercion and gender violence, the continued focus on teenage sexualities within the context of structural inequalities, gender power imbalances and the suffering of young women in particular remain important particular in South Africa where sexual violence has become a concern of epidemic proportions. Beyond representations that frame teenage sexualities exclusively within the domain of suffering, this paper seeks to demonstrate the ways in which teenage Africans make claims to love and the social processes through which love is articulated. Drawing on an interview study of teenage Africans in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, the paper shows how the construction of love creates possibilities in relationship dynamics that alter familiar versions of masculinity and embedded within care, negotiation and agency. Such newer versions of sexuality however are in tension with the continued vulnerability faced by young women in particular emphasizing the importance of attending to gender ideologies, economic dislocation and masculine power. Addressing teenagers as sexual subjects, as agents of love instead of agents of violence alone and constrained by social, gendered and economic processes is important in working with and developing interventions that seek to increase sexual well-being amongst young Africans.