The President of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa), Kgoshi Lameck Mokoena, has announced that initiation schools are now allowed to re-open after they were banned for two years, due to COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking to the media, Mokoena says they will introduce COVID-19 precautionary measures in all the schools.
In the video below, Death rate at initiation schools hit record high in Eastern Cape:
He further says they will work with law enforcement agencies to fight against illegal initiation schools.
“We agreed that this time around it won’t be business as usual. If a principal of a particular school used to have lets say 100 initiates, we are going to scale down the number so that they are manageable.
So that even at our schools there must be social distancing and we would demand that any Ingoma holder and principal of the school make sure that all PPEs must be there in terms of sanitizers and all other things. Therefore we are not going to compromise on that. And that is why we are calling on people who want to have Ingoma to be ready to adhere to all those requirements.”
In 2021 the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL Rights Commission) ordered that all illegal initiations schools be shut down.
The Rights Commission has been briefing the media following the death of 34 initiates in the Eastern Cape last year.
CRL Chairperson David Luka Mosoma said illegal schools account for the majority of the deaths.
