Penis transplants for botched circumcision victims

‘Initiation has lost its cultural and spiritual value’

MANY African males go through the painful ordeal of botched circumcisions during their initiation, which often leads to penile amputation.

To help the victims, the Department of Health has successfully begun penis transplant procedures in the Eastern Cape.

Collen Bonnecwe, the director at the department’s medical male circumcision programme, said they had a urologist and a plastic surgeon to provide reconstruction services.

The Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities conducted an investigation through public hearings, focused on the initiation schools and the challenges they faced.

The hearings, conducted in Gauteng, the Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Mpumalanga, Free State and Limpopo, confirmed the extent of the problem.

A report compiled by the commission revealed that between 2006 and 2014 there were 557 deaths due to initiations, and only 260 arrests made. Most initiates were subjected to violence, drugs, alcohol and even death at the initiation schools.

According to Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva, the chairperson of the commission, poor families in both rural and urban areas were at high risk of death and injuries at initiation schools.

She said some of the driving factors were young people trying to score a quick buck who ran the practices themselves, a diminished number of traditional leaders and overseers, as well as single mothers who could not be father figures to their male children.

“Initiation has lost its cultural value. It is a spiritual thing, and is not something that you just do. The ancestors are informed and there are certain rituals that are practised. It is a process and there are secrets that happen in the mountain, and now we have dead bodies and police vehicles, so it is not secret anymore,” said Mkhwanazi-Xaluva.

“We cannot allow such an important cultural practice to die because of criminals. Things have gone overboard. We will arrest them,” she added.

According to her, many cases had been dismissed due to a lack of evidence and witnesses, but they were working on reviving them and getting justice for the wronged.

Other issues she mentioned were of males being abducted and forced to participate in initiation practices, as well as those who felt pressured by their peers and left home in order to be a man, only to return home as a totally different person with violent, aggressive tendencies and a totally different perception of what manhood was.

The commission and firsthand victims made the following recommendations:

Areas designated for initiation practices must include security, clean water and fencing.

Parents and guardians need to be fully informed, and precounselling needs to be given to the males who are going to be initiated to fully understand what they are getting into.

There needs to be a prescribed check-up and immunisation before the initiation.

All single-headed households must be protected by offering the necessary support.

Suspend all initiation-related acts until December next year.

Prince Mahlangu, the chairperson of the Initiation Monitoring Task Team, acknowledged the challenges and said the task team supported the commission’s decision to put all initiation practices on hold until December next year, so that further solutions could be found.

“We need to enforce the law by arresting perpetrators, and to use extreme measures to curb this ongoing matter,” he said.