Prayers go up for all initiates

With seven reported deaths of initiates since the beginning of the winter circumcision season, traditional leaders in the Eastern Cape are now calling for divine intervention.

They believe that traditional leaders, the government and concerned civic society groups have done all that is humanly possible to prevent fatalities and injuries in the initiation schools, yet still deaths cannot be prevented despite the interventions.

Now they are putting their hope in God.

In the latest incident that brought the toll to seven last Sunday, four initiates were killed in a fire at an initiation school in Qumbu.

Traditional affairs provincial spokesman Mamnkeli Ngam confirmed that seven initiates have so far died, with the latest victim drawing his last breath in Lusikisiki yesterday.

Of the seven, six are from the OR Tambo region and the other one is from Dimbaza near King William’s Town.

On Wednesday, traditional leaders in conjunction with the Community Development Foundation of South Africa (Codefsa) launched multi-denominational prayer meetings for safe initiation at AmaKhwetshube’s Nkosi Zanoxolo Mjoji’s Great Place in Emalangeni village near Lusikisiki.

Mjoji and Codefsa director Nkululeko Nxesi said the prayer meetings would continue until the end of the initiation season.

Traditional initiation in Mpondoland and the OR Tambo district has for many years been marred by criminality, penile amputations, commercialisation of the rite, assault and deaths of initiates.

Fighting among amakrwala on how each underwent the rite – either in isiZawa (the AmaHlubi way) or the AmaXhosa way instead of the AmaMpondo way, has also disgraced the rite, as initiates who graduate from the schools are often killed during heated arguments.

Boys as young as 11 years are circumcised by men acting illegally as traditional surgeons or nurses and hijacking the tradition for a quick buck.

The prayer session in Lusikisiki was attended by traditional leaders from the Eastern Cape House of Traditional Leaders and OR Tambo, Ingquza Hill, Flagstaff and Lusikisiki initiation forum leaders.

“There are many initiatives, interventions and programmes that have been rolled out starting from awareness campaigns and building rescue centres to having the new law,” Nxesi said.

“In the past years they were dying in large numbers and it was extremely scary.

“As much as numbers are going down steadily, with the millions pumped into these interventions, we still have deaths and injuries in our initiation schools.

“So we felt that we needed to add another intervention – an intervention of interventions, and invite God to take control.

“Only with God can we truly save the lives of our initiates. For that matter, the first person to undergo this rite was Abraham,” Nxesi said.

Nxesi cited the Bible’s Genesis verse 24, chapter 17, that God was the founder of the circumcision covenant when he ordered 99-year-old Abram, who later became known as Abraham, to be circumcised along with all males in his house including his 13-year-old son Ishmael.

“So we cannot forsake God when it comes to circumcision.”

Mjoji, who is an active member of the OR Tambo Traditional Initiation Forum, said: “We need divine intervention more than anything to deal with all the problems of circumcision and initiation.”

Codefsa has set up initiation rescue centres, paying for traditional nurses and security personnel guarding the centres and also feeding the initiates.