Nomthandazo Watts is a HTS counsellor, which specialises in HIV testing and counselling. She began working with condoms too, to train others, and tried the inner condom herself at home.
This article is part of an African Alliance series celebrating 25 years of the inner condom in South Africa and the people who helped to establish the world’s biggest state-funded inner condom project.
Nomthandazo Watts starts every day in the early morning with a cup of tea. She speaks to the African Alliance after a hectic day; collecting condoms from the warehouse to distribute, and only once the children have gone to sleep and she has some quiet time. She began working at Mediclinic in 2000, but our story really gets started in 2012, when she accompanied a friend to get a circumcision at Themba Hospital in Mpumalanga.
“I saw the ladies who were giving a health talk about circumcision; remember in the old days you used to go a day before for counselling and the next day you go for the circumcision.”
The women leading the talks also spoke about condoms, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). That’s what caught Watts’s attention. She asked them how she could also get into this kind of work, as a HTS counsellor. HTS is an HIV testing service. Watts got in touch with someone who did the training, attended, and eventually got a job at Kabokweni Clinic, also in Mpumalanga. Her next clinic job was at Riverside Clinic.
It was there that she met Lucas Nkosi.
“With counselling, you only do it whenever there are clients. And the occupational clinic is not like the community clinic, it’s just for the staff. So I said to him [Mr Nkosi], ‘I would like to distribute condoms in the provincial office departments, so all the departments from legislature up to the public works. At least I will have something to do when it’s not clinic days,’” Watts explains.
She went to additional condom training between 2014/2015. That’s where she met Maya Gokul – a professional nurse who’s trained people on how to use the inner condom since 1998.
Watts says people were still confused about the inner condom when it was presented.
“I think the FC2 is very important, though it came after the male condom – I wish it would have come before,” she says.
Most women don’t want to use the inner condom, she says, but she’s tried it, and likes it. She says when you pull the condom out, it can help in the short term for discharge that some women do not like. But just to be clear; most discharge is normal and healthy.
She’s worked in multiple healthcare roles, and since 2022 she’s been working in advocacy and communications. One of her tasks was to monitor condom champions across Mpumalanga. Now, she’s the one who coordinates the condom training, among other things.
“It protects us from all the STIs and pregnancy. I’m sure it will not tear. This condom is very strong,” Watts explains. It has fantastic grip, she adds, explaining that when a partner enters the vagina, it is as though the penis is closing a tunnel. She says it’s important to take it slowly at first – like with any good sex.
Watts says that though she was trained and taught about it, it was important for her to try to use it herself with husband. Even though her husband thought it was big, and might be noisy, he agreed. They both enjoyed the experience – and it was not too big and not noisy at all.
Watts is a lesson to everyone – don’t bash it until you try it.
Have you ever used an inner condom? Let us know what it was like! Get in touch with us on X and Instagram. We’re at @Afri_Alliance on both platforms.