Circumcising The Township

A recent and fast-growing cult of initiation schools is assailing Kokosi, a township near Fochville in the North West, which is further damaging the image of a town that gained notoriety for rampant corruption at its drivers licensing department.

Over and above the infamous protestations that plagued the neighbourhood nearly two years ago, when residents reacted to termination of employments of a number of people who worked at yet another villainous enterprise named BMP, an explosives manufacturer racking in profits from the Merafong Mining sector, a new traditionalist propaganda is been proselytised by initiates from various sects.

These initiation schools, located just a couple of kilometres outside the township are said to often be owned by women, themselves not circumcised, who have made a booming business enterprise that is worrying to a number of residents.

According to some residents who did not want to be named, these schools charge an excess of about R6000 for a three week initiation period, during which the ceremony is said to transpire.

Other witness accounts claim that boys as young as 13 are becoming victims of kidnappings and forced into these initiation schools.

It is also alleged that these kidnappers then return to the boys’ parents claiming the boys volunteered, and a deposit of R2000 is often demanded for admittance into the schools.

Such sporadic schools of masculinisation have been a trend in the face of changing gender dynamics in this country, where young boys are convinced by society and media that brute culture and vagabondage are synonymous to a healthy masculinity.

Tradition has often been called the exegesis of this phenomenon, which is a symbolic rite of passage, which has often been misconstrued by its practitioners in this contemporary social space of unfavorably devastating health concerns.

Paradoxes are then easily incurred in many instances, such as when a Xhosa boy is initiated in the Basotho tradition.

In Kokosi, there is for instance a virulent spate of gangsterism which is associated with initiates from certain ‘sects’, and often than not the victims of the indiscriminant violence are the initiates themselves, who have been dubbed ‘mentally divergent’ after the ceremonies.

Machismo and its worship of force and aggression are symptoms residents associate with these new initiates, not the care-giving manhood of our father which was inculcated through traditionally sober initiation rituals and processes.

The tradition of circumcision has entered into its deepest crisis since time immemorial, a continual sinking into the barbarism of capitalist agenda and corruption.

In short, this burgeoning entrepreneurship enterprise is hell-bent on turning customs into commodities in order to maintain and increase profitability.

It is an undeniable fact that in most religions, circumcision is a means to masculine self-awareness and self-realization. I often associated the shedding of the foreskin with an act of inaugurating the organ of life into a realm of creators.

Opening the life-giving orifice was every man's duty to the sustenance of human life, I often argue.

But of late, circumcision is singularly perceived from the stand point of ‘who can take the pain’, and initiates deemed worthy only when withstanding the pain, as pain is often thought to purify. Or at least that’s the idea.

Understanding that most township boys have been socialized over ages to think of pain in terms of justice, what devilry is seducing our young to this flawed view of a sadistic role of males in society?

Most initiates here are active participants in rapes of women.

When circumcision is supposed to help create and strengthen communal feeling, identity and solidarity among males in a society, it has systematically become a platform fueled with misogynistic sentiment.

Lured by prospects of respect by their peer, young men ignorantly conclude to indulge in the orgiastic cult practices that eventually castrate them.

More often than not, these young boys volunteer into such rites, and leaving school in the process.

Schools, as institutions of care beyond the parents, are obliged to provide a note allowing for leave and that document must be signed by parents, and certified by the SAPS so as to hold the initiation practitioners accountable in instances of malpractice.

But in most instances, that is not the case.

Some members of the community now point to police corruption which thrives on reimbursements by these initiation initiatives undertaken by unscrupulous entrepreneurs.

So what does one say?

What happens when a nation turns its young and most productive males into castrated monsters hell bent on venting their pent up rage on whoever stumbles into their path?

What happens to their sense of commitment to social institutions such as matrimony? Can they sustain romantic relationships without bouts of violent outbursts?

What do women eventually represent in the psyche of these boys often raised by single mothers?

My point of view is that masculinity as a social construct, obviously having a plethora of flawed foundations which are still perpetuated by our brute-force driven culture, has to change its psychological trajectories prior to any re-evaluation of the importance of such traditional practices. Boys need be fully educated from an early age about misinterpretations of cultural customs and therefore be equipped with knowledge that will save them from partaking in nonsensical initiatives and cults. And these lessons are to be imparted by grown men in our society, but sadly most of the father figures have themselves lived through the traumas of botched initiations. Then what needs to be done? Render the practice inappropriate and force its premature extinction?