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The Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) on Wednesday met with the Department of Traditional Affairs (DTA) and various stakeholders to interrogate initiation deaths following this year’s winter season.
 
Among the stakeholders were a delegation from the Eastern Cape Department of COGTA, amakhosi and members of the Provincial House of Traditional Leaders who are also leaders of the Eastern Cape Provincial Initiation Coordinating Committee, members of the National House of Traditional Leaders and members of the National Initiation Oversight Committee
 
Alarming numbers
 
Presenting the outcomes of the winter customary initiation season, Ms Shoky Mogaladi, responsible for Research Policy and Legislation in the DTA, told the committee that there were 32 initiation deaths recorded in legal and illegal initiation schools throughout the country during this winter season. “The highest number of deaths (44%) are from the Eastern Cape with 14 deaths. Nine deaths were recorded in illegal and five in legal initiation schools,” she said.
 
Yesterday’s committee meeting followed an earlier induction workshop in August this year on the outcomes of the winter customary initiation season. At the time, the committee said that there was a need for deeper interrogation of the persistent deaths of initiates and other complications associated with male customary initiation by looking at, among other things, the role of cultural attitudes and the effectiveness of the Customary Initiation Act of 2021. The committee sought to assess the impact of the legislation and whether it is responding adequately to the male customary initiation challenges. 
 
The figures presented to the committee showed that 224 initiates were hospitalised during the season, with the highest number (113) in the Eastern Cape. There were 89 cases opened with the police during the season. “When compared to the 199 illegal schools, 32 deaths and three amputations, there is a low rate of reporting and opening cases related to initiation,” said Ms Mogaladi. Despite the 89 cases opened during the season, there were only 46 arrests, indicating a low rate of arrests (just above 50% arrest rate). The committee heard that more arrests and successful prosecutions could serve as an effective deterrent to perpetrators.
 
Grief and losses
 
The committee heard that among the reasons for the low number of arrests and successful prosecutions following botched customary initiations were, among other things, parents and caregivers not cooperating. This was flagged as a significant challenge, especially in the Eastern Cape, since initiation “is supposed to be a family issue”.
 
Criminal cases tend to collapse in courts because families are reluctant to cooperate and provide evidence as the initiation practices are conducted with the participation of relatives. Cooperation with criminal investigations tends to be frowned upon and attracts stigma within the community. Because the custom is deeply respected, communities face the grief without challenging the tragic losses. This inadequate community involvement in ensuring compliance with the Act and insufficient resources were flagged as undermining the support for Provincial Initiation Coordinating Committees and thus hindering the effective management of initiation schools in many provinces.
 
The law and changing mindsets
 
The committee’s Chairperson, Dr Zweli Mkhize, noted this as a concern and stressed that it is vital to see if the legislation is working and, if it is, why there are still deaths recorded.
“The primary issue here,” the Chairperson said, “is that no death of any initiate must be accepted under any circumstances. It is the right of communities to practice this age-old custom.”
 
Judging from the reported causes of death, they are all avoidable results of negligence that must be stopped, the committee noted. Government, traditional and community leaders need to ensure that the legislation impacts at the grassroots level. The law must assist all stakeholders – locals, traditional leaders, families, initiates, and communities to use their influence to change the mindset by curbing misinformation and eliminating social stigma so that the deaths are not accepted as part of the custom but seen as an unacceptable distortion of the custom that can always be practised safely.
 
The committee noted the comments of the traditional leadership, including the Deputy Minister, that there are no powers assigned to the traditional leadership to enable them to enforce safety provisions in the conduct of the custom. As such, traditional leaders are unable to prevail sufficiently to transgressing community members. The Chairperson said this is why the committee’s focus must be on the amendment of this Act to provide a more robust mechanism of local community peer review under the strong guidance of traditional leadership.
 
Vital role of traditional leaders
 
Acknowledging the vital role that traditional leaders can play in improving and changing the lived reality at the grassroots, the Chairperson said that the envisaged amendments need to assign responsibility and powers to the local and different levels of traditional leadership (amakhosi and izinduna). “This is so we do not have a token committee that complies with the law as it stands but has no impact on changing the attitudes and conduct on the ground to bring a stop to the deaths. Traditional structures must be used to deal with this custom because that is where the authority resides, as they are custodians of customs and traditions.”
 
The committee stated that the amended legislation, bolstered with adequate resources, will empower a grassroots campaign of government, traditional leadership and civil society through schools, churches and social groupings to save the initiates. In this regard, the committee commended the role of the Department of Health and the non-governmental organisations that are on the ground saving the lives of initiates.
 
The committee resolved to engage the Minister and the Premier of the Eastern Cape in re-examining necessary amendments in the legislation and propose the invigoration of the campaign. The amendments must be initiated by the traditional leaders so that the existing gaps are closed, the criminal justice system can work effectively, and the negligence that results in initiation deaths is addressed.
 
Stronger accountability 
 
Given the health and safety risks, the committee stressed that the responsibility must be assigned to all those involved in the chain of customary practice and that there must be ways to hold the traditional practitioners to account, irrespective of the cooperation of the parents and community. The committee also stated that customary practitioners should be adequately supervised so that they can take responsibility for their actions and or lack of action. “Ordinarily, in any medical setting, whether or not the community or the patient complains or cooperates, the law can enforce that no one who has not undergone the necessary training is allowed to practice. That is done to ensure the safety of those patients. This principle must be applied in this situation,” said Dr Mkhize.
 
The committee noted that the envisaged amendments, to be steered by traditional leaders, will go a long way in improving their oversight capacity. The committee also acknowledged the complexities surrounding the different initiation customs across different regions. While certain aspects of the custom may be possible to standardise in the legislation, it was noted that standardised English interpretation terms, such as “initiation school” in the legislation, mean very different things to different communities and may sometimes be confusing. It was thus recommended that such diversity might be served by avoiding standardised English terms but rather utilise the vernacular words (such as ingoma, ibhoma, etc.) in the legislation to preserve nuances that underlie the deeper meaning and cultural variation of the same custom as practised differently in each community.
 
The committee reiterated its commitment to respecting cultural diversity and ensuring safe customary initiations with the necessary cultural sensitivities.

Issued by the Parliamentary Communication Services on behalf of the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on COGTA, Dr Dr Zweli Mkhize