Safe sex pioneers: Class identity, peer education and emerging masculinities among youth in Mozambique

Studies on sexual behaviour within the area of HIV prevention in sub-Saharan Africa have largely focussed on unsafe sex and obstacles to condom use rather than examined factors potentially favouring safe sex. The present study examines how class, gender and peer education affects safe sex in male youth and identifies the reasons behind condom use by combining a questionnaire survey with ethnographic fieldwork. Findings from the field study among male secondary school youth in Maputo, Mozambique point to middle class youth from urban schools as more likely to use condoms than working class youth from suburban schools. Examining the meanings behind use or non-use of condoms the study identified narratives in middle class youth favouring safe sex in response to better social conditions, career opportunities and ‘modern’ masculinities, whereas working class youth explained non-use of condoms as due to lack of hope and job opportunities and by reference to fatalist ideas that life is out of their hands and that it’s better to ‘live in the moment’.