This Tuesday Special Assignment tells the story of an Mpumalanga boy who is facing rape charges after he and his young friend allegedly raped a 4-year-old girl. But the boy alleges he was merely following orders from elders at the time of the incident. Rape and kill a girl, he says, formed part of manhood lessons at the initiation school he attended. To make matters worse, he was only ten when he was allegedly abducted and taken to the school.
We speak to the boy’s mother who takes us through the ordeal, from the time she opened an abduction case until she saw the police arriving at her workplace with her son in the van. They informed her that he’d been arrested for rape.
A psychologist we spoke to says there is a direct link between what the boy allegedly did – rape the little girl – and what he witnessed at the initiation school. But custodians of the practice say that this is an aberration and that there is nothing wrong with the way they practise circumcision. 
The parents of the boy are frustrated by the fact that police claim a charge of abduction was never laid, while the parents of the girl are also fuming. Two years after the event the rape case is still pending, because the probation officer/social worker still hasn’t submitted the relevant information.
Lessons in Manhood is filmed by Byron Taylor and was produced by the Special Assignment team. |
