Not least, she said, she rejected the notion that it is acceptable to pass judgment on the virtue of girls while ignoring the morals of boys. Educating boys and girls, she argued, is a better weapon against AIDS.
Zulu leaders, however, called the tests a revered tradition ideally suited to address modern ills. King Goodwill Zwelithini Zulu called virginity tests an umbilical cord between modern Zulus and their ancestors.
In Pietermaritzburg and in Durban, hundreds of bare-breasted women and girls in traditional Zulu short skirts and beaded necklaces marched in opposition to the ban. Inkosi Mzimela, the chairperson of South Africa's House of Traditional Leaders, an Assembly of tribal chiefs, called the legislation outrageous and warned that communities would defy it.
Even South Africa's deputy president at the time, Jacob Zuma waded into the debate last year. Zuma, a Zulu, personally attended a virginity-testing ceremony, endorsing the practice as a way to shield African values against the corrosive effects of Western civilization.
"This is none of the government's business," said Nomagugu Ngobese, a Zulu virginity tester in Pietermaritzburg who says she has identified a number of rape victims and perpetrators of incest through testing. "People are devaluing our things, but we are not going to quit. They must come and imprison me if they like, because this has helped our children."
After voting to ban virginity testing entirely, Parliament backtracked last month, restricting the tests to girls aged 16 and over who consent to it. Carol Bower, the executive director of Resources Aimed at the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, a South African advocacy group that lobbied for the ban, called that "an OK compromise."
"We don't think it is good enough," she said, "but it is as good as it gets." If the new law is enforced, there will be no examinations without gloves, no white dots on the foreheads of girls deemed virgins.
And there will be no 14-year-olds like Sibongile, who began the morning in buoyant mood and ended it hiding in the rear of the tent, insisting tearfully that whatever her tester's judgment, she remained a virgin.
In Lamontville, a busy township of plywood shacks and modest concrete dwellings, Jabu Mdlalose, a volunteer community health worker, holds a monthly virginity testing session. November's ceremony was also a coming-of-age celebration -- a sort of Zulu bat mitzvah sponsored by the families of two girls who had reached puberty, featuring prayers to ancestors, bathing in a moonlit river and the slaughter of a goat.
Mdlalose, 42, donned a black-and-white beaded hat and settled on the ground under the red-and-white tent for the Saturday morning tests. "We don't force them," she said, as the girls lined up. "The girls want to protect themselves."
A few girls attributed the turnout -- 57 in all, aged five to 24 -- to parental pressure. Many others said they enjoyed the camaraderie and took pride in the ritual. "At first it was embarrassing," said Karabo Ngobese, 19. "But you get used to it."
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