Urgent action needed to stop circumcision deaths

The Herald Editorial: The continued loss of life during the traditional circumcision practice in the Eastern Cape requires urgent intervention. This winter season alone 41 initiates have died, while 10000 have been rescued from illegal initiation schools in hard-to-reach areas of Transkei every year.

These boys suffer at the hands of unscrupulous opportunists who pose as traditional surgeons and have little interest in the custom or the welfare of those they maim.

In response to the ongoing problem, the Eastern Cape legislature passed a law – the Application of Health Standards in Traditional Circumcision Act – in 2002 in a bid to regulate health aspects of the practice.

The Act was intended to ensure initiates were only circumcised after parents or guardians had given permission and initiates had to be 18 or older.

Irresponsible iingcibi and amakhankatha (traditional surgeons and nurses respectively) who contravene the Act are liable to a fine of R10000 or imprisonment of up to 10 years.

But boys continue to die because of botched circumcisions performed by fly-by-night surgeons. Others are left with permanent scars, often the loss of their manhood.

The fact that eight years after the law was introduced not one person has been jailed suggests the provisions of the law are not being adhered to and there is insufficient supervision of the custom.

The Health Department currently sends officials to inspect initiation schools. They are assigned during the winter and summer season and are insufficiently trained to assist initiates in need of help. Neither are they permitted to arrest those they find running illegal initiation schools raising serious questions as to their efficacy.

To suggest the custom be banned or be performed in hospitals, as has been suggested, would be to underestimate its importance in the Xhosa community. In order to save it communities must resume the role they played in the past.

Traditional leaders were historically the custodians, where a boy was only circumcised after permission from a chief or a designated leader, like a headman.

In the democratic dispensation, traditional leaders are paid salaries and given resources like vehicles and it is high time they used these and their authority to stop illegal circumcisions.

Further, the Act must be amended to allow inspectors the right to intervene at initiation schools where the welfare of initiates is at stake; to take any person performing illegal circumcisions into custody, and to provide heavy penalties for those found guilty.