More than 500 initiates are expected to take part in the winter initiation season across the Western Cape.
While the season is still in its early stages, more than 60 initiates have already entered initiation schools. The season comes amid ongoing cold weather and heavy rainfall affecting parts of the province.
Traditional leaders expect participation numbers to increase significantly in the coming weeks as the season progresses.
Somagwaza Institute founder and traditional surgeon Sikelela Zokufa says preparations began before the season started, with training provided to traditional surgeons and caregivers to ensure they are equipped to manage winter conditions and protect initiates.
Zokufa says, “Now we’ve already started the training. We train the initial surgeons and the carers before we go to the initiation so that we are well prepared for the initiation season. Right now it’s winter, so our preparations are prepared for the winter season. There are a lot of rains, and the weather is very bad in the Western Cape during this time. We’ve done all of that things we ensure actually we gave the initiates the consent form so that they can go to the clinic and screened physical fitness to check the physical fitness but in addition on that we also screening traditional surgeons and the carers because we don’t want the initiate to be infected by the disease of the carer.”
The Director for Arts, Culture and Language in the Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport, Themba Mchunu, says the safety and well-being of initiates remain a priority.
Mchunu says training programmes are conducted before every initiation season and involve traditional caregivers, surgeons, the Department of Health and local municipalities.
Mchunu says, “The safety and the well-being of our initiates obviously, it’s a priority to us, so what we do at the beginning of each season, we do a number of workshops, training programmes that we do with the traditional carers as well as the surgeons, this is done to ensure that safety and wellbeing of our initiates across the initiation schools it is not compromised.”
“So these programmes are done in partnership with for example Department of Health and also work very closely with the local municipalities who do also fire and environmental management training just to make sure that we might be during this time be dealing with heavy rains, but we may also in other sights be dealing with veld fires, so these training are done to ensure that should any of these environmental challenges come to the fore then we are able to respond and do so timeously.”
Zokufa says new measures have also been introduced this season, including a ban on alcohol at initiation sites.
Zokufa says, “We’ve actually done the adjustment which are not which are new actually to the communities. The alcohol most of the people believe that the initiation goes with alcohol of which that’s not true. That’s not true. The only alcohol is accepted it’s traditional beer which is Umgqombothi which is only accepted. Right now we’ve stopped the alcohol to the mountain, we are saying no more alcohol…
“Now we are urging the communities not to bring alcohol during the initiation season because that comes to us and says that we are teaching their children to drink alcohol while they were not drinking.”
Authorities and traditional leaders say initiation sites will continue to be monitored throughout the season to ensure the safety and wellbeing of initiates. – Reporting by Yonda Magubudela
Search under way for 9 boys allegedly held at an illegal initiation school in Matile:
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