It Girl falls from grace

'YOUNGINS': REFLECTS CRISIS THAT ONE IN SEVEN NEW MOMS IN SA IS A TEEN >>→ As fear grips Buhle Kunene, her ex is her pillar of strength.

- Citizen reporter

Last Friday, Youngins' disgraced former head girl and queen bee Buhle Kunene (Kealeboga Masango) got the rug-pull of the year as she started to suspect she could be pregnant by her married, older ex-lover, Kabelo (Lungile Radebe).

It makes her part of a growing South Africa statistic of one in seven new mothers still in their teens and 89.7% of those pregnancies are fathered by men between the ages of 20 and 29 years. The number of teen mothers has gone up by 17.9% over a four-year period.

We asked Masango to take a pregnant pause and unpack how Buhle got here, and how that will impact her decisions around the pregnancy.

When Kabelo arrived on the scene, what problems of Buhle's was he a solution to?

Losing “It Girl” status really did mean a lot to her, because it's something she's been planning prior to entering Matric. Losing that, she had no sense of direction.

Buhle is not great with uncertainty. That's made her spiral and act up in school, because she's scared of the unknown.