Mass circumcision leaves 39 boys dead after botched tribal 'initiation'

A tribal "initiation ceremony" that featured a mass circumcision left 39 teenage boys dead after it was botched.

The 2025 initiation ceremony in South Africaended with nearly 40 deaths and dozens more mutilated. Despite the government having set a target of zero fatalities this year, the figure remains a big drop on the 93 from last year with 361 boys having died in the past five years.

Gruesome complications in 2024 led to 11 penis amputations after unskilled traditional “surgeons” used old spears and razor blades to perform the eye-watering rituals.

Thousands more since 2020 ended up in hospital after the twice-yearly three-month periods of initiation ending with the circumcision to mark the transition to manhood. Without undergoing the annual ceremony known as Ulwaluko the teenagers are not allowed to sit in on tribal meetings or take part in some social activities or get married.

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The rituals have been held for centuries in secret in specially built huts away from the villages where nobody except the tribal elders and the young initiates can enter. The Government lays the blame on criminal gangs who have set up hundreds of unregulated illegal initiation schools with untrained “medics” who botch the circumcisions.

They ignore the law that anyone aged under 16 cannot undergo the ritual and charge high prices to families to carry out Ulwaluko often with fatal or horrific end results. Gangrene, sepsis and dehydration are the main cause of death even though it has been reported boys who back out had also been stabbed, drowned or beaten to death.

There are hundreds of reports a year of illegal schools kidnapping boys as young as 12 and carrying out the surgery then forcing the parents to pay to get their sons back. The Customary Initiation Act has been introduced to make it illegal for unregistered initiation schools to be set up and all traditional surgeons must now be qualified.

Police now have the powers to shut down the illegal schools and arrest the principals. Every year tens of thousands of boys undergo the transition from boy to manhood which is a sacred ceremony dating back for generations despite the very high death rate..

The Minister for the Department of Governance & Traditional Affairs had set a target of zero deaths for 2025 in registered schools while police shut down illegal schools. According to a tribal chief Sipho Mahlangu, Deputy Chair of the National House of Traditional Leaders, 80 per cent of initiates who die or mutilated are the victims of the illegal schools.

Most die due to severe dehydration after being forced not to drink to prevent urination after circumcision. The Govt has pledged to cut the number of illegal schools preying on teenagers in half from 429 by 2029.

Although boys have a choice as to whether they undertake the initiation there is huge peer pressure and those who refuse are named Inkwenkwe or “boy” – a harsh insult.

Traditional surgeons charge parents to take the boys away for up to three weeks to teach them survival skills and how to behave as a man then perform the dreaded “snip”. Scotty Dawka, 19, went to an initiation school despite having seen a TV programme on penile amputations and told a local reporter: “I was of course very scared of going.

“In my community many boys went through the initiation before me and I wanted to be the same as them. I wanted to be looked up to as a man in my village by the elders. It was very painful to go through and I fell ill but I was treated and survived” he said.

Anne Kumalo had her 16-year-old son kidnapped when he went to a local store along with 22 other boys and taken to an illegal initiation school 20 miles away in Soweto. She said: “I was charged R1000 (£43) to get him back or warned he would be killed and when police found the school the boys had been badly treated, whipped and beaten”.

Political party Action SA’s Eastern Cape leader Athol Trollip said: “The bulk of deaths are caused by illegal initiation schools run by opportunistic and unqualified individuals. Now all the schools have to be registered and the surgeons properly trained” he said.

In launching this year’s winter initiation season the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Mr Velenkosini Hlabisi vowed to reduce the death toll greatly. He said: “All initiation schools are accountable and any school that contravenes the law and endangers lives then the law is unequivocal and they will be closed down at once.

“We cannot accept any more deaths and owe it to these young men and their families to ensure their journey into adulthood is safe, dignified and respected and of course safe. We cannot bring back the lives lost last year or before that but we can honour them by ensuring that no family has to ever endure going through that pain ever again” he said.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela wrote about the spiritual meaning of his own circumcision as a teenager before becoming accepted as a freedom fighter. Those who have undergone the sacred ritual are sworn to secrecy and considered tribal outcasts and severely beaten or killed if they tell anyone what the process entails.

The worst of the injuries occur from botched circumcisions carried about by tribal “nurses” who may use the same spear for many boys which cause mass infection. The wounds are tightly wrapped with bandages that cuts off the blood supply to the area and within 10 hours the genitals can become gangrenous and need amputating.

Many initiates do not seek medical treatment despite being in agony for up to 10 days having been told that if it “falls off” that it will grow back but then they die from sepsis. In the summer season from November to January 28 boys died and in the winter season from May until today 11 boys died and the figure for penile amputations is unreported.