“I watched my sons walk with sticks and limp to the toilet as they fought to restore their manhood for more than a year. I cried with them as they were being humiliated by their own community.”
Nelson Ngonini of Qumbu, Eastern Cape, recollects how the lives of his two sons were turned upside down to a point where they faced losing their penises after the physical abuse they were subjected to at an initiation school in 2016.
At the time they were aged 18 and 25 years.
“Traditional circumcision is a beautiful journey and it should be protected but we can’t ignore that so many things are going wrong in this custom. Government is failing us to find ways to protect our children from the violence, abuse and lack of care that has taken over our custom,” said Ngonini.
Ngonini’s sons spent over 18 months in and out of hospital receiving medical attention and eventually undergoing reconstructive surgeries to save their genitalia after they were assaulted on the mountain.
“That was a scary period for my family and my children. They kept to themselves and when they were not at hospital they would spend so much time at home. They even quit school and some community members were hostile to them and had started shaming them and calling them names like ‘gays’ or even referred to them as ‘girls. It was difficult. I watched as everything unfolded before my eyes. As their father, I was powerless,” said Ngonini.
Once initiates make it out of the first week, they are normally rewarded with a celebration that includes slaughtering of a goat and drinking of umqombothi or liquor. Young men from the village would normally conduct this ceremony with a few elders.
“Once the elders left, some young men from other villages came at night and started assaulting my boys with sticks. They hit them because they [initiates] were drunk. They tied their hands and also hit them on their private parts with sticks. They were severely injured and when I saw them I thought they were going to have to be amputated,” said Ngonini.
Two of the men were arrested, while the other three fled to Cape Town.
The initiates were initially taken to a local hospital and then later to Nelson Mandela Hospital in Mthatha where the skin of their thighs had to be cut off and used to mend their genitalia.
For months they had to use sticks to walk about and had to depend on a urinary catheter to relieve themselves.
“They are starting to be their old self again. One of them is now going to university,” said Ngonini.
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