INTRODUCTION

Traditional male initiation has in recent years been the focus of government and media attention as a result of unacceptably large numbers of initiates being severely injured or dying. Between 1995 and 2006, more than 6 500 boys undergoing initiation were admitted to Eastern Cape hospitals, more than 300 died and over a hundred had their genitalia amputated following ritual circumcision (see Apps 2005: 28). The Eastern Cape Department of Health reported that eight initiates had died in the province between early January 2007 and November 2006 although two of these deaths were not directly related to circumcision (one had been murdered and another had died in a fire at a school). This represented a decrease in the number of deaths compared with the same period in the preceding year when fifteen deaths had been recorded. However, multiple problems continue to beleager traditional initiation practices in the Eastern Cape. In 2009 alone, ninety-one newly circumcised men in the Eastern Cape died, fifty-six of those deaths occurring in the mid-year school holidays (Associated Press 2010).

Would-be initiates are mindful of the risks and their sense of uncertainty is compounded by an awareness of the extent to which the reproduction of the custom has become fragile and uncertain. The role prescribed by tradition for families is not always followed where there are many female-headed households, and the certainty of communal bonds and hierarchies implied by the practice have been fractured and become muddled. The social imperative to be initiated is as strong as it ever was, accompanied by an uncompromising set of social and physical punishments for those who fail to abide by it, but the social networks and foundations upon which that imperative once securely rested, and which served to support it, are no longer in place in many communities. This has led to a crisis with multiple dimensions including bogus fly-by-night surgeons and circumcision lodge operators; widespread reports of alcoholism and drug abuse by initiates and by those practising as traditional surgeons and nurses; and under-age boys being abducted into circumcision lodges or taking it upon themselves to be circumcised without the knowledge of their families.