Stakeholders involved in traditional male circumcision in the Eastern Cape are hoping for an incident-free initiation season which will start this weekend.
The Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs in the Eastern Cape has called on communities to be actively involved in all processes of the ritual to prevent the deaths of initiates.
Forty initiates died during the last summer initiation season.
Eastern Cape Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC, Xolile Nqatha, says measures have been put in place to curb the deaths.
“There has been an extensive awareness campaigns taking place including [on] social media networks. [There] is a plan to use some personalities that young people identify with, that can communicate the message to ensure that there is compliance and steps are taken before boys go for initiation,” adds Nqatha.
Meanwhile, traditional surgeons and nurses are also calling for proper training.
Andile Siko is one of the traditional surgeons.
“They need to be equipped. You cannot just equip professional nurses that drive the bakkies – we need to equip the people that work with the boys from the word go. From the first day, we need to make sure that they got all the equipment they need mentally.”
“Because we [are] dealing with a lot of things, with the boys not just the wound. Now I need to be trained for such, so that I can deal with those [challenges]. Even when it comes to trauma counselling, because out of the 40 that died how many did receive trauma counselling as it traumatized them,” adds Siko.
The video below discusses the traditional male circumcision:
