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CULTURE
Ancient rite: a surge of deaths and mutilations has horrified government officials, health workers and traditional leaders
DEBATE RAGES AS YOUNG MEN KEEP DYING IN VILLAGES across Pondoland, groups of young men emerge from mist-veiled hills wrapped in blankets, their faces daubed with clay, singing proudly of their newly achieved adulthood. Family and friends welcome them back with dancing, feasting and stick-fighting. But while celebrating echoes in the distance, at the mud home of 16-year-old Bonga Marubene, the painful silence is interrupted only by the splash of dishes being washed in a plastic basin. Bonga, like his elder brother before him, went into the bush to be circumcised, an ancient rite for boys passing into manhood, and never returned. A week after he underwent circumcision without anaesthetic, community elders told the family to collect their ailing son. He died before they could carry him home - one of at least 19 young initiates who lost their lives since last month in the Eastern Cape alone. "I am so heartbroken," says Bonga's mother, Nomapitch Marubene. "I see the other mothers ... celebrating the homecoming of their kids, and yet I sit here and grieve." A surge of deaths and mutilations during the rite practised by the Xhosas, who make up about 17% of South Africa's 45 million people, has horrified government officials, health workers and traditional leaders. More than 200 young men have been reported killed since 2001 as a result of the cherished custom that former president Nelson Mandela, a Xhosa, described in his autobiography as "a kind of spiritual preparation for the trials of manhood". Many of the deaths are the result of botched circumcisions. Others die of dehydration, hunger, exposure and disease during the month they spend recovering and learning the secrets of adulthood at initiation schools held in rudimentary huts at the height of the South African winter. Eastern Cape authorities have sought to regulate the practice, requiring that prospective initiates obtain consent from their parents and doctors. District medical officers pay regular visits to the traditional surgeons and schools, which must be certified under provincial law. Zweli Phakamile Dweba, the provincial health department's liaison on traditional affairs, says the new rules are yielding results. Fourteen of this year's deaths took place in a small, remote region inhabited by the Pondo clan. In the rest of the province, thousands of youths went through the ritual safely. In Pondoland's villages, debate rages over circumcision as traditional among Pondos. Some elders did not do it and say their children are being influenced by members of other Xhosa clans they meet at school. In the past, boys waited until they were at least 18 before approaching their fathers for permission to be circumcised. But in these deeply impoverished villages, many men leave their families for most of the year to work in distant cities, leaving their young sons to decide for themselves when they are ready. Older boys who have been through the process tease younger ones - some just 14 - into going. Bonga followed his 19-year-old cousin, Nkosifikile Fayini, into the bush without his mother's consent. Marubene was left scrambling to find the food and extra blankets he would need to withstand the ordeal. Other children are forced to go without. The boys were given plenty to eat and had a fire to keep them warm, Fayini says. But their attendants, some barely adults themselves, refused to give them water, believing it would cause them to urinate and delay healing. Within days, Bonga and another initiate started having visions and behaving strangely, Fayini says. When Fayini developed similar symptoms, his parents pulled him from the school. But for Bonga, help came too late. Marubene, 52, is helpless to explain the tragedy that has twice befallen her family. Her eldest son, Xolani, died in similar circumstances seven years ago. Autopsies were done, but she says she was never told the results. Her neighbours whisper of witchcraft. Dweba blames the region's extreme poverty, isolation and prevalence of H1V, pneumonia and other diseases. Some surgeons use the same blade on many boys, increasing the risk of infection, he says. When things go wrong, the boys' attendants and families delay sending them to hospital because of the stigma associated with not completing the ritual in the bush. Dweba shudders when told the name of the surgeon who conducted Bonga's circumcision. Mpumelelo Gudla - a bony man, with a bad leg and reputation for drinking - has been arrested at least twice in connection with the death or injury of initiates but has never been brought to court. Prosecutors say it is a difficult case to prove without forensic evidence. The boys who go to Gudla - known professionally as Nkoncweni - say he is kind and does not bother about their age or paperwork, provided they have a chicken to pay him. But he insists he does everything by the book. "There has never been any problem in my practice," says Gudla, who has been trained by the government and claims to have circumcised about 2 000 boys this season. "I blame the guys who are in charge of them in the bush. They bandage them very tight and they don't give them water when they need it." If authorities really want to help, he says, they should build him a hospital so boys don't have to walk back to their villages the same day they are cut. Marubene, however, is not interested in their solutions. She has another son approaching adulthood. "I just wish my kids would never, ever again go to the initiation schools," she says.
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