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Boys undergoing initiation rites |
January 05, 2006, 22:15
The death toll of the circumcision season in the Eastern Cape has risen to 22, with the news that a would-be initiate has hanged himself at Bholothwa in the Queenstown area. Sizwe Kupelo, a provincial spokesperson for the health department, says Mzwanele Diniso (24) was found hanging from a tree on New Year's Day after going missing from the illegal initiation school he was attending.
Kupelo said the young man told relatives last week he wanted to be taken to hospital because he suspected something was wrong with him, but his uncles told him they could not see anything amiss, and that he should stay at the school. On January 1, he woke up early and said he was going for a walk. His body was found later the same day by a search party.
Kupelo said the results of a post mortem examination would probably be available tomorrow. There is a possibility that the traditional surgeon and nurses running the illegal school would be arrested. The incident, said Kupelo, shows the importance of allowing abakwetha to go to hospital when necessary, or at the very least calling the department so they could be treated at their schools. "It also illustrates our point that this [the circumcision issue] needs to be approached broadly," he said. "People need to differentiate between the actual custom, and whether the people who have been tasked to handle the thing still value the custom."
Interference
Kupelo's department was recently criticised by Mwelo Nonkonyana, a prominent Eastern Cape chief, for "interfering" in the ritual. Nonkonyana said the ongoing deaths showed the ancestors did not approve of what the department was doing in closing down unregistered schools and prosecuting unregistered surgeons.
Kupelo said critics should, however, look at what necessitated the department's intervention, and whether it is working. "These boys were dying long before the intervention, and they are still dying, but the intervention has helped reduce the numbers," Kupelo said. He also stressed the importance of parents and community members calling in the department as soon as they realised there is a problem, not at the 11th hour, when a boy is about to die. "We can have all these 4X4s, helicopters and officials, but if we don't get information we don't know, and people die." - Sapa
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