The National House of Traditional Leaders and Department of Traditional Affairs (NHTL) has set up a task team to monitor initiation schools in an effort to curb fatalities.

Speaking at hearings conducted by the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Rights of Cultural‚ Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL) on the deaths of initiates in Gauteng‚ Brian Sithole‚ from NHTL said the department was concerned with the number of initiates who die every year at initiation schools.

“We don’t have a legal instrument [to regulate initiation schools] except the children’s Act‚” he said.

Sithole said there were instances where children as young as 14 who go through initiation and when asked to leave the school‚ they refuse.

“Children in Limpopo go there [initiation schools] at a very tender age and that poses a challenge.”

He said the national task team would ensure that owners of illegal initiation schools are arrested‚ that suitably qualified surgeons are hired and would work with families to ensure the initiates are safe

“One of the challenges we have is that some traditional leaders and owners of initiation schools do not allow the monitoring task team near the schools. They refuse to open for them to interact with the initiates.”

More than 500 initiates have died in the country in the past nine years and according to the CRL Rights Commission the number will continue to rise if the problem remains unattended.

 The commission will be conducting investigations into the deaths of the initiates across the country. — TMG Digital