Indaba hellbent on ending the deaths of male initiates

Government has failed to come up with plans to prevent deaths of initiates despite many plans of action they had in the past.

This was the view of the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL) which is hosting National Initiation Indaba which focuses on preventing the death of male initiates at the Birchwood Hotel in Ekurhuleni. It will run until tomorrow. 

CRL chaiperson Prof David Mosoma said their mission was twofold.

“ One, we’ve have had a number of interventions to make sure that we can scale down the deaths of initiates, strategies, awareness and all of that … and they’ve not yielded any results. As a result of the escalation of deaths and we can see that it doesn’t see (these deaths will end).

“Hence, we felt it is important to bring traditional leaders and different structures in their provinces just to say, can we allow this? If we value the culture, can we associate it with the deaths of our children. Because if that is the case it means that culture is implicated in this.

“Now how do you continue to promote and protect a culture which is implicated in the deaths of children. We wanted to separate that culture on its own doesn’t kill. Therefore there are processes that are leading children to die and let’s deal with that by creating strategies and make sure that we agree that we mitigate against the deaths of our children,” said Mosoma.

Some of the causes of deaths at initiation schools were illegal schools, dehydration, murders, among other things. Most of the deaths occur in the Eastern Cape. 

“We need to make sure that we eliminate illegal initiation schools. We also need to make sure that legal initiation schools comply in terms of mitigating the deaths of young people,” said Mosoma.

The commission said figures showed that more than 700 initiates have died since 2006.

The co–operative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) deputy minister Zolile Burns–Ncamashe said the law should be implemented and perpetrators slapped with maximum sentence to send a strong message to criminal syndicates operating illegal traditional schools.

“There are those who are hellbent on criminalising and scandalising this old age tradition.”

In 2021 the Customary Initiation Act was signed by President Cyril Ramaphosa to prevent deaths and injuries at initiation schools. The law was meant to have initiation school operators screened for criminal records, and discourage the use of alcohol in the mountain, while and imposing stiffer sentences on illegal operators.

Ncamashe said it was vital for young people and women to also actively participate in such discussions.