Every culture has its proud traditions, most dating back to a time few can remember.
My own culture likes to open a parliamentary session by slamming the door of the House of Commons in the face of somebody called Black Rod, who has been sent to summon the members of the House of Commons to an audience with the Queen in the House of Lords. There they will hear her read a speech (written by themselves) outlining what they promise to do as a government over the next twelve months. The procession from the Commons to the Lords features men and women in wigs, knee breeches, silk stockings and buckled shoes, some carrying a variety of heavily decorated symbolic things like the Mace. It all makes perfect sense in the 21st century, doesn’t it?
Well, of course it doesn’t, but it doesn’t harm anybody and, rather like the daily changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, it obviously keeps the tourists happy. The guard could just as easily be changed by a few well armed guys in army camouflage being dropped off at a control centre every few hours. But the Brits prefer to have a bloke in a huge bear-skin hat standing in what looks like a telephone kiosk without the telephone and have lots of sergeant-majors shouting on the parade ground.
A not so proud tradition in South Africa is the annual initiate slaughter in the Eastern Cape. Young boys whiten their faces and leave home to go through a time-honoured ritual to become men. Part of the process is the ritual circumcision performed by medically unqualified elders and which every year causes either death or horrific genital mutilation.
This year, 23 boys have already died, many through dehydration because, whatever science may say, it’s also apparently regarded as character building for the body to be deprived of water. These deaths occur every year and part of the problem is the existence of illegal initiation schools. It is impossible to imagine the grief a family must experience to lose a child who goes away a boy and, instead of returning a man, returns in a body bag.
One obvious improvement to the tradition would be for the circumcision to be performed in sanitary surroundings and by a qualified medic rather than a shaky-handed old tribal elder. But that eminently reasonable suggestion hasn’t gone down well with the traditionalists, some of them quite obviously delusional.
Nkosi Mwelo Nonkonyana, from the House of Traditional Leaders, said: ‘We are saying no. The colonialists want to suffocate and suppress us. They want to promote circumcisions in hospitals which is taboo.’
It perhaps hasn’t occurred to Mr Nonkonyana’s giant brain that if the ‘colonialists’ wanted to suppress them they probably wouldn’t be offering to save black lives by performing modern surgery. But what are a few young lives compared with time-honoured tradition?
Fortunately, the Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Rights Commission has suspended initiation schools for a year in four regions of the Eastern Cape, especially where deaths occurred, until all compliance-related matters are comprehensively addressed.
On Thursday, the commission also called for the removal of initiates following the death of 23 of their peers from a number of factors, including dehydration.
Commission chairperson Professor David Mosoma said it had observed ‘with dismay that, in given instances, the cultural practice of initiation robs families and communities of young people who either die or suffer genital amputation’.
Sadly this won’t bring back any lives and a major concern of the Commission is the abduction of young boys to be taken to unregistered initiation schools and the unwillingness of certain police stations to investigate for fear of upsetting the traditional leaders.
Perhaps it’s time for the SA government to recognize that we are living in 2020 and such practices are barbaric and outdated. Different times call for different methods. After all, we Brits used to test whether a woman was a witch by using the ducking stool. The woman would be lowered on a stool under the water and left there for a while to drown. If she was still alive when the stool was lifted out of the water it was proof she was a witch and she was burned at the stake. Eventually somebody pointed out the obvious injustice of this system and we moved on. Maybe it’s time to update the annual initiation ritual and save a few lives.
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Kgalema Motlanthe could have been destined to end up as a Trivial Pursuit question. This almost invisible man was President of the Republic of South Africa for a very short period between September 2008 and May 2009, having stepped in after Thabo Mbeki was recalled. Too short a time to do any real damage, one would think. However, he clearly decided to make up for lost time and Motlanthe’s extravagant spending habits were revealed last week in a comparison of how much our ex-presidents have cost the taxpayer over a three-year period.
The contenders were the four living ex-presidents, F W de Klerk, Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma. Most punters would have probably put their bets on Zuma as the most profligate, but Motlanthe won the Freeloading 10 Furlong Handicap by several lengths. He and his wife managed to blow R3 925 000 of our money over a three-year period with a cool million going on airfares and a further R400 000 on hotels. But the most mystifying is the R2.4 million allegedly spent on car hire.
I hire a car from Europcar occasionally and it costs me about R3 000 for two weeks. So let’s assume maybe R7 000 a month for car hire or R84 000 a year. That’s roughly R250 000 for three years. Even allowing for our politicians’ feeling of entitlement and that only the best will do, one would be hard-pressed to spend R2.4 million over a three-year period on car hire.
I think an explanation is in order. By the way, the cheapest ex-pres was F W de Klerk, who cost the taxpayer only R197 000 for air fares. And on that uplifting note, may I wish you all Merry Christmas.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the IRR.
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[Picture: Buhlefrank, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55097366]