TRADITIONAL initiation is an idea that seems to avoid critical interrogation in SA.
It is true that as the number of related deaths has increased over the years (14 so far this year and 141 in hospital) so has an outcry, of sorts. Mostly, however, this response has been limited to the deaths themselves — how best they can be avoided — while very little is said about the practice itself.
It is deemed to be beyond reproach, protected by the all-powerful word that makes many South Africans voluntarily surrender their critical faculties: "culture".
Let us look at some of the assumptions inherent in the idea to see how they hold up to scrutiny.
What is the purpose of initiation? The general defence tends to revolve around the claim that it is a passage to "manhood".
"Manhood", however, is never explained. What things are there in human nature particular to being a "man"? Responsibility is the same, whether one is a mother or father. The principles are universal. Leadership? It, too, and the values that underpin it, are equally applicable to men and women. Strength of character? Again, there is no element of one’s character that, whether man or woman, cannot be equally strengthened, developed or nurtured. In short, there is nothing that makes a boy a man that does not, likewise, make a girl a woman.
I challenge anyone to name one trait particular to men that women too cannot equally meet. Of course it is a challenge no one committed to basic human rights can meet because, to do so, would be to deny equality itself.
So "manhood" is a myth.
It is a product of a deeply sexist and patriarchal idea that the nature of men is somehow unique to them and their passage to maturity defined by ideas only they, as men, are able to grasp and master. It is an antiquated idea promoted and protected by people who are trapped in a cultural practice out of sync with the modern world and the demands of equality.
But it is more than that. Like all forms of initiation — from the school locker room to university residences — it is about power. Who has it, and to whom and how are they willing to pass it on?
If you want it you have to suffer, psychologically and physically.
Consider this: all those millions of men the world over who have grown and matured into healthy, well-adjusted, virtuous and upstanding members of society, and who never underwent initiation, how did they do it? There is nothing any human being cannot learn about life and its demands that cannot be imparted to them without initiation. Even if you were to accept that there was some unique value to initiation, there is nothing about it that cannot be replicated elsewhere, without the mysticism and secrecy, or the violence.
...
THE blog site Ulwaluko sets out how, since 1994, in excess of 915 people have died during initiations (Ulwaluko: Problems). "A total of 919 deaths have been recorded since 1995. Accurate statistics are not available for the number of amputations, but their number is roughly twice the number of deaths," it states.
How we mourn for the victims of Marikana. Compensation funds are mooted. Public holidays are called for. Yet how relatively little we despair at this particular tragedy.
But accompanying this is much other violence: "All initiates suffer from some form of abuse. They are commonly beaten on their heads, and the practice of ‘nose pulling’ sometimes leads to nasal lacerations. Even penile bandages are often tightened as a form of punishment. Severe beatings occur frequently. Some initiates are being burnt with objects, and I have seen one initiate whose penile bandage had been yanked off repeatedly."
Central to much of this is tolerance for pain (hence the ceremony is often held over winter). It is considered "unmanly" to complain. That is not the definition of manliness. It is a description of weakness; for pain is part of the human condition, not a source of shame. Denying it is to deny part of the human experience.
On his blog, Raymond Suttner writes of initiation: "The qualities of physical endurance of harsh conditions are possessed by some and not all. The qualities we require of men need to be openly articulated and discussed. Is gentleness no part of becoming a man?"
Well, quite. But gentleness, sensitivity and demonstrable emotion are presumably exclusively feminine ideas; at least that seems to be the unstated belief.
It is secrecy that keeps these backward ideas alive. And secrecy too that fuels the moral decay that seems to have so badly infected the practice in SA. Transparency is how standards are maintained. Secrecy is how they are eroded.
Indeed, any more open and transparent undertaking would be superior for the simple reason that it opens itself to adaptation, innovation and improvement. The cult-like secrecy that shrouds practices such as initiation, as with all myth-based cultural practices, renders it closed, shut off from best practice, self-replicating and thus inherently recalcitrant. It is a vicious circle of ignorance.
Take the advent of the bill of human rights and the Constitution. Is this taught at initiation schools? Certainly understanding it is a quintessential part of being a responsible citizen in modern-day SA. If it were, it would be ironic indeed — a men’s-only affair, designed to teach men how to be men, while communicating the necessity of equality. How does one square that circle?
...
JUST as important: do traditional initiation schools teach men how to change nappies, to wash dishes, to use a vacuum cleaner or to cook? Not on your life. You can be sure it will be argued these all fall in the domain of women. No doubt many of those who so proudly boast of their initiation would balk at the idea that they indulge any of these things on the path to manhood. They are men, after all. How embarrassing. Is this the 1950s?
In fact, what exactly is the curriculum for these schools? The public is rightly and deeply seized with what their children are taught at school, so why is this any different? Why does no one call for the lessons to be made public? If they are helpful, why not share the information? There is no teacher, fully committed to self-actualisation, who would not leap at the chance to replicate knowledge and wisdom so that others might benefit. All we have are euphemisms. The truth is initiation teachers are gatekeepers; interested not in knowledge but power.
Interwoven through these teachings is much magic and superstition. In A Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela writes of his own initiation: "We were then instructed to leave the hut and go tramping through the night to bury our foreskins. The traditional reason for this practice was so that our foreskins would be hidden before wizards could use them for evil purposes, but, symbolically, we were also burying our youth."
If initiation schools want the status of valuable education, and the seriousness that goes with it, they cannot simultaneously expect respect for encouraging people to creep around at the dead of night to bury parts of their body for fear of sorcery. It’s one or the other.
And the power inherent in it is just as malicious as it is in its explicit violence.
If you were to shun the practice, inevitably, you would be shunned by your community — alienated and isolated. Belittled, mocked and degraded. Little wonder so many unthinkingly commit to it, because if they do not, in rural SA, so defined by collectivism, it would be to reject one of the very rituals designed to re-enforce that other all-powerful South African word: "community".
...
WHY then, do we indulge it?
Imagine opening Men’s Health magazine and there appears before you an advert: "New school for men opening: We teach men how to be men. Along with those things that make men, men, we will teach you the character value of pseudo-voluntary physical mutilation. No women allowed."
What would be the public response? You can be fairly sure it would be damning. And then you find out the government is using public money to do everything in its power to ensure the idea of the institution is protected and respected, only to make sure no one is physically harmed? That is, outside of any voluntary mutilation they feel is necessary.
There would be an outrage.
Here is a snippet from the world of traditional initiation, according to Kgoshi Mokoena, of the House of Traditional Leaders in Mpumalanga: "Uncircumcised policemen are not allowed to investigate the deaths either, no uninitiated person is allowed to enter Ingoma (initiation school); not even a police officer."
So crime itself is not subject to this sort of patriarchal, sexist nonsense. I wonder how the House of Traditional Leaders enforces that? Do they ask policemen to display their genitals? Mokoena is in for a shock. The law cares nothing for such idiocy. If a crime has been committed any policeman or woman can investigate. Yet, you wonder, does the South African Police Service indulge this madness?
People are dying, for goodness sake. And the House of Traditional Leaders is worried about whether investigators are circumcised or not? How dare they demonstrate anything but absolute and complete co-operation. It is disgraceful.
Why are we so hesitant to call a spade a spade?
What, in principle, is different from female and male circumcision? In practical terms the differences are acute — female circumcision is a far more brutal, heartless business, the consequence of which can destroy both lives and dreams. But in principle? Both involve physical mutilation in the name of some antiquated cultural belief. Yet female circumcision is shunned and decried as barbaric while male circumcision is protected and defended. Hypocrisy does not come thicker.
Imagine the archetypal man’s man. The paterfamilias who has sent his son to a school with a proud rugby tradition, one he attended. How, when his son comes home after a brutal locker room initiation, during which he might have been beaten and humiliated, he tells him to "man up". Or sadder still, the son, so keen to impress, suppressing his natural response to being bullied, instead teaching himself to remember it fondly, so that he might inflict the same on the next generation and, in time, send his own son to the same school. This how both gender stereotyping and violence is perpetuated. In traditional initiation, these impulses are at their worst.
...
"WITHOUT a word, he took my foreskin, pulled it forward, and then, in a single motion, brought down his assegai", writes Mandela. "I felt as if fire was shooting through my veins; the pain was so intense that I buried my chin into my chest. Many seconds seemed to pass before I remembered the cry, and then I recovered and called out, ‘Ndiyindoda!’ I looked down and saw a perfect cut, clean and round like a ring. But I felt ashamed because the other boys seemed much stronger and braver than I had been; they had called out more promptly than I had. I was distressed that I had been disabled, however briefly, by the pain, and I did my best to hide my agony. A boy may cry; a man conceals his pain."
Real men don’t cry? Why not? Repressed people don’t cry. And they are worse off for it. Ask any psychologist — pain suppressed will find a way out and, when it does, it often isn’t a pretty sight. And SA is an angry enough place as it is.
Marvel at the language used to justify the abuse: "tradition", "team spirit", "bonding", "being a man", "ethos", "ceremony", "rite of passage" and "building character". These are the words and phrases used by the powerful to justify physical violence; to give it the allure of legitimacy and prestige.
There are many out there who pretend initiation is an education. If it is, then simply do away with circumcision. But that is something that cannot be accepted, because it is not just an education. It is about power and patriarchy. It is an education in archetypes and it has no place in a human rights-based society — whether it is the Eastern Cape or Springbok locker room. It is a practice run by bullies that damages, if not warps, self-esteem.
This is the blunt truth: there exists a fear in SA that to criticise traditional initiation is to be seen as "anti-African", if not racist. That lies at the heart of the problem. So there is no meaningful critical discussion about the practice. But initiation, in all its forms, is a terrible practice. Why do we silently watch on?
...
HOW we scrutinise the language of sexism in the mainstream media. How feminists decry the many subtle and obvious manifestations of inequality in society today. But men, busy mutilating their own self-worth in an organised and systematic manner, look on at the horror and maintain their silence. How pathetic. How weak.
There is a cultural practice in our midst that is abhorrent. Ironically, it is time for men to stop acting like children and to speak out.
Initiation belongs to another time and place, not a modern, constitutional democracy. If it is education people want to give, by all means, do so. But put equality at the heart of it, not stereotypes; and make learning — not violence — its centrepiece.
Young men after a successful initiation ceremony in the Eastern Cape. Picture: DAILY DISPATCH
TRADITIONAL initiation is an idea that seems to avoid critical interrogation in SA.
It is true that as the number of related deaths has increased over the years (14 so far this year and 141 in hospital) so has an outcry, of sorts. Mostly, however, this response has been limited to the deaths themselves — how best they can be avoided — while very little is said about the practice itself.
It is deemed to be beyond reproach, protected by the all-powerful word that makes many South Africans voluntarily surrender their critical faculties: "culture".
Let us look at some of the assumptions inherent in the idea to see how they hold up to scrutiny.
What is the purpose of initiation? The general defence tends to revolve around the claim that it is a passage to "manhood".
"Manhood", however, is never explained. What things are there in human nature particular to being a "man"? Responsibility is the same, whether one is a mother or father. The principles are universal. Leadership? It, too, and the values that underpin it, are equally applicable to men and women. Strength of character? Again, there is no element of one’s character that, whether man or woman, cannot be equally strengthened, developed or nurtured. In short, there is nothing that makes a boy a man that does not, likewise, make a girl a woman.
I challenge anyone to name one trait particular to men that women too cannot equally meet. Of course it is a challenge no one committed to basic human rights can meet because, to do so, would be to deny equality itself.
So "manhood" is a myth.
It is a product of a deeply sexist and patriarchal idea that the nature of men is somehow unique to them and their passage to maturity defined by ideas only they, as men, are able to grasp and master. It is an antiquated idea promoted and protected by people who are trapped in a cultural practice out of sync with the modern world and the demands of equality.
But it is more than that. Like all forms of initiation — from the school locker room to university residences — it is about power. Who has it, and to whom and how are they willing to pass it on?
If you want it you have to suffer, psychologically and physically.
Consider this: all those millions of men the world over who have grown and matured into healthy, well-adjusted, virtuous and upstanding members of society, and who never underwent initiation, how did they do it? There is nothing any human being cannot learn about life and its demands that cannot be imparted to them without initiation. Even if you were to accept that there was some unique value to initiation, there is nothing about it that cannot be replicated elsewhere, without the mysticism and secrecy, or the violence.
...
THE blog site Ulwaluko sets out how, since 1994, in excess of 915 people have died during initiations (Ulwaluko: Problems). "A total of 919 deaths have been recorded since 1995. Accurate statistics are not available for the number of amputations, but their number is roughly twice the number of deaths," it states.
How we mourn for the victims of Marikana. Compensation funds are mooted. Public holidays are called for. Yet how relatively little we despair at this particular tragedy.
But accompanying this is much other violence: "All initiates suffer from some form of abuse. They are commonly beaten on their heads, and the practice of ‘nose pulling’ sometimes leads to nasal lacerations. Even penile bandages are often tightened as a form of punishment. Severe beatings occur frequently. Some initiates are being burnt with objects, and I have seen one initiate whose penile bandage had been yanked off repeatedly."
Central to much of this is tolerance for pain (hence the ceremony is often held over winter). It is considered "unmanly" to complain. That is not the definition of manliness. It is a description of weakness; for pain is part of the human condition, not a source of shame. Denying it is to deny part of the human experience.
On his blog, Raymond Suttner writes of initiation: "The qualities of physical endurance of harsh conditions are possessed by some and not all. The qualities we require of men need to be openly articulated and discussed. Is gentleness no part of becoming a man?"
Well, quite. But gentleness, sensitivity and demonstrable emotion are presumably exclusively feminine ideas; at least that seems to be the unstated belief.
It is secrecy that keeps these backward ideas alive. And secrecy too that fuels the moral decay that seems to have so badly infected the practice in SA. Transparency is how standards are maintained. Secrecy is how they are eroded.
Indeed, any more open and transparent undertaking would be superior for the simple reason that it opens itself to adaptation, innovation and improvement. The cult-like secrecy that shrouds practices such as initiation, as with all myth-based cultural practices, renders it closed, shut off from best practice, self-replicating and thus inherently recalcitrant. It is a vicious circle of ignorance.
Take the advent of the bill of human rights and the Constitution. Is this taught at initiation schools? Certainly understanding it is a quintessential part of being a responsible citizen in modern-day SA. If it were, it would be ironic indeed — a men’s-only affair, designed to teach men how to be men, while communicating the necessity of equality. How does one square that circle?
...
JUST as important: do traditional initiation schools teach men how to change nappies, to wash dishes, to use a vacuum cleaner or to cook? Not on your life. You can be sure it will be argued these all fall in the domain of women. No doubt many of those who so proudly boast of their initiation would balk at the idea that they indulge any of these things on the path to manhood. They are men, after all. How embarrassing. Is this the 1950s?
In fact, what exactly is the curriculum for these schools? The public is rightly and deeply seized with what their children are taught at school, so why is this any different? Why does no one call for the lessons to be made public? If they are helpful, why not share the information? There is no teacher, fully committed to self-actualisation, who would not leap at the chance to replicate knowledge and wisdom so that others might benefit. All we have are euphemisms. The truth is initiation teachers are gatekeepers; interested not in knowledge but power.
Interwoven through these teachings is much magic and superstition. In A Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela writes of his own initiation: "We were then instructed to leave the hut and go tramping through the night to bury our foreskins. The traditional reason for this practice was so that our foreskins would be hidden before wizards could use them for evil purposes, but, symbolically, we were also burying our youth."
If initiation schools want the status of valuable education, and the seriousness that goes with it, they cannot simultaneously expect respect for encouraging people to creep around at the dead of night to bury parts of their body for fear of sorcery. It’s one or the other.
And the power inherent in it is just as malicious as it is in its explicit violence.
If you were to shun the practice, inevitably, you would be shunned by your community — alienated and isolated. Belittled, mocked and degraded. Little wonder so many unthinkingly commit to it, because if they do not, in rural SA, so defined by collectivism, it would be to reject one of the very rituals designed to re-enforce that other all-powerful South African word: "community".
...
WHY then, do we indulge it?
Imagine opening Men’s Health magazine and there appears before you an advert: "New school for men opening: We teach men how to be men. Along with those things that make men, men, we will teach you the character value of pseudo-voluntary physical mutilation. No women allowed."
What would be the public response? You can be fairly sure it would be damning. And then you find out the government is using public money to do everything in its power to ensure the idea of the institution is protected and respected, only to make sure no one is physically harmed? That is, outside of any voluntary mutilation they feel is necessary.
There would be an outrage.
Here is a snippet from the world of traditional initiation, according to Kgoshi Mokoena, of the House of Traditional Leaders in Mpumalanga: "Uncircumcised policemen are not allowed to investigate the deaths either, no uninitiated person is allowed to enter Ingoma (initiation school); not even a police officer."
So crime itself is not subject to this sort of patriarchal, sexist nonsense. I wonder how the House of Traditional Leaders enforces that? Do they ask policemen to display their genitals? Mokoena is in for a shock. The law cares nothing for such idiocy. If a crime has been committed any policeman or woman can investigate. Yet, you wonder, does the South African Police Service indulge this madness?
People are dying, for goodness sake. And the House of Traditional Leaders is worried about whether investigators are circumcised or not? How dare they demonstrate anything but absolute and complete co-operation. It is disgraceful.
Why are we so hesitant to call a spade a spade?
What, in principle, is different from female and male circumcision? In practical terms the differences are acute — female circumcision is a far more brutal, heartless business, the consequence of which can destroy both lives and dreams. But in principle? Both involve physical mutilation in the name of some antiquated cultural belief. Yet female circumcision is shunned and decried as barbaric while male circumcision is protected and defended. Hypocrisy does not come thicker.
Imagine the archetypal man’s man. The paterfamilias who has sent his son to a school with a proud rugby tradition, one he attended. How, when his son comes home after a brutal locker room initiation, during which he might have been beaten and humiliated, he tells him to "man up". Or sadder still, the son, so keen to impress, suppressing his natural response to being bullied, instead teaching himself to remember it fondly, so that he might inflict the same on the next generation and, in time, send his own son to the same school. This how both gender stereotyping and violence is perpetuated. In traditional initiation, these impulses are at their worst.
...
"WITHOUT a word, he took my foreskin, pulled it forward, and then, in a single motion, brought down his assegai", writes Mandela. "I felt as if fire was shooting through my veins; the pain was so intense that I buried my chin into my chest. Many seconds seemed to pass before I remembered the cry, and then I recovered and called out, ‘Ndiyindoda!’ I looked down and saw a perfect cut, clean and round like a ring. But I felt ashamed because the other boys seemed much stronger and braver than I had been; they had called out more promptly than I had. I was distressed that I had been disabled, however briefly, by the pain, and I did my best to hide my agony. A boy may cry; a man conceals his pain."
Real men don’t cry? Why not? Repressed people don’t cry. And they are worse off for it. Ask any psychologist — pain suppressed will find a way out and, when it does, it often isn’t a pretty sight. And SA is an angry enough place as it is.
Marvel at the language used to justify the abuse: "tradition", "team spirit", "bonding", "being a man", "ethos", "ceremony", "rite of passage" and "building character". These are the words and phrases used by the powerful to justify physical violence; to give it the allure of legitimacy and prestige.
There are many out there who pretend initiation is an education. If it is, then simply do away with circumcision. But that is something that cannot be accepted, because it is not just an education. It is about power and patriarchy. It is an education in archetypes and it has no place in a human rights-based society — whether it is the Eastern Cape or Springbok locker room. It is a practice run by bullies that damages, if not warps, self-esteem.
This is the blunt truth: there exists a fear in SA that to criticise traditional initiation is to be seen as "anti-African", if not racist. That lies at the heart of the problem. So there is no meaningful critical discussion about the practice. But initiation, in all its forms, is a terrible practice. Why do we silently watch on?
...
HOW we scrutinise the language of sexism in the mainstream media. How feminists decry the many subtle and obvious manifestations of inequality in society today. But men, busy mutilating their own self-worth in an organised and systematic manner, look on at the horror and maintain their silence. How pathetic. How weak.
There is a cultural practice in our midst that is abhorrent. Ironically, it is time for men to stop acting like children and to speak out.
Initiation belongs to another time and place, not a modern, constitutional democracy. If it is education people want to give, by all means, do so. But put equality at the heart of it, not stereotypes; and make learning — not violence — its centrepiece.
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