The year is well into its twilight and almost per tradition, there are scams aplenty as dubious characters also want to bring the proverbial bacon home to the Christmas dinner table.
The rite of passage that is coupled with circumcision of young men has been part of most African cultures since the beginning of time. It is in the main a time-honoured tradition that has been passed from one generation to the next. No culture is static and every cultural practice will need to accommodate a level of dynamism if it were to survive.
There have been many innovations around koma, as this rite of passage is referred to by Sotho-speaking groups in this part of the world. Modern practices have found their ways into initiation school to some degree or the other. Unfortunately, con men have not missed the opportunity for a quick buck that the practice presents.
In rural areas that are in the main under traditional leadership, koma is handled in a dignified way often bereft of the skulduggery we at Sowetan often report about in the practice in urban, supposedly more civilised, communities.
Just yesterday we reported on the abduction of eight young men in a swoop that brought the number of kidnapping suspected to be linked to fly-by-night initiation schools to 20 in one week. Communities in the Sedibeng area of the Vaal seem to have accepted this criminal activity as a fact of life. When young men disappear ahead of the festive season, it is commonly assumed they have either gone to illegal initiation schools, been kidnapped or trafficked into going “to the mountain”.
It is often done under cloak and dagger methods that allow for little supervision, if any at all. This would explain why among the eight that disappeared last week as we reported, was a nine-year-old boy. Now, what boy barely out of their nappies is ready to be a man?
The parents or families of the boys taken in this blatant moneymaking scam are forced to pay to have their children released back to them after the initiation. They also have to pay for or buy essential necessities the initiates would need while “at the mountain”.
We have often seen feeble attempts to bring in some semblance of the rule of law by raiding such ramshackle camps in the velds around townships. The police often take members of the media with, in what amounts to little more than a PR exercise while the problem remains.
If that were not the case we would not be reporting about these year in, year out without much progress in eliminating the evil. People were rounded up previously and charged with opening illegal initiation schools that were often nothing but mutilation camps. What has become of those cases?
There will only be respect for the law when the law enforcers do and are seen to do their job.
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