Initiation has been commercialised‚ making it a boon for criminals: Community activist

The tradition of initiation into manhood has been commercialised and has turned into a boon for gangsterism and drug addiction.

This is according to Dipou Moholane‚ a community activist in the Vaal area‚ who has produced a documentary on illegal initiation schools in Sedibeng.

"Our culture has been commercialised. That is why you find that children being abducted from schools and there is a fee attached to that. The people running illegal initiation schools are criminals. They sell drugs at the schools. They turn the children into drug addicts‚" Moholane said on Wednesday.

She was addressing hearings into the deaths of initiates conducted by the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Rights of Cultural‚ Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL).

• READ MORE: Boys as young as 14 go to initiation schools‚ posing a health risk: House of Traditional LeadersThe National House of Traditional Leaders and Department of Traditional Affairs (NHTL) has set up a task team to monitor initiation schools in an effort to curb fatalities.

"We are not able to get to the bottom of what is actually going on in the schools because what happens there is private. 

"Out of these illegal schools we get gangsters‚ drug addicts and children who are unruly in their homes and parents leaving their homes because they are scared of the children."

Moholane said the police were not assisting communities in eradicating gangsterism and the illegal initiation schools.

"We are having a problem with the different state organs. The SAPS; when parents report that their children are missing‚ they open cases‚ but they never go back to communities to say what has happened.

"When a child comes back injured‚ they will open an attempted murder cases‚ but nothing happens.

"The local government is not helping either and not treating the matter with the urgency that it needs. Hence the community has taken the law into their own hands‚" Moholane said.

She called for all initiation schools to be suspended as she believes they are not serving their original purpose.

"We don’t believe that this is cultural. Our culture doesn’t actually produce gangsters; it doesn’t produce criminals and terrorists of homes. In our view‚ it has moved away completely from culture. It’s become something else. It is criminality."

• READ MORE: Teen opted to go to initiation school after being victimised for not being circumcisedWhen a Johannesburg teen was bullied at school and not allowed to share a toilet with circumcised fellow pupils‚ he secretly went to an initiation school‚ only to suffer more abuse.

Major General Zodwa Molefe‚ of the Sedibeng SAPS Cluster Officer‚ told the commission that they have seen an increase in the number of incidents related to the illegal initiation schools.

"The initiates create camps from the schools and compete against each other when they come back from the initiation schools. The competition leads to violent activities and establishment of gangsters.

"The young boys are targeted with the promise of being made respected men in the communities.”

Molefe said a number of cases of attempted murder and murder have been reported to the police after children die or get injured from the schools.

"The police are inundated with complaints from Sedibeng. Most of the cases are withdrawn because parents fear being victimised by their own children. Others fear being witnesses to the cases."

- TMG Digital