09.07.2025

​Mass Circumcision Ceremony That Killed 93 Kids Is Set To Happen Again

Traditional rituals that mark the path to manhood are part of many African cultures. In South Africa the secretive initiation season costs the lives of dozens of boys each year. Hudreds more sustain terrible injuries at the secluded initiation sites where initiates are taught traditional chants and fighting techniques but often beaten and humiliated as they undergo these rites. The annual tribal “initiation ceremony” where teenage males in South Africa undergo painful circumcision has begun – despite it ending in 93 horrific deaths last year. Gruesome injuries also led to a further 64 penis amputations after unskilled traditional “surgeons” used old spears and razor blades to perform eye-watering rituals. Hundreds more ended up in hospital after being whisked off to the secret camps where the “snip” marks the end of three weeks transitioning from a boy to full manhood. Without undergoing the ceremony known as Ulwaluko, the teenagers are not allowed to sit in on tribal meetings or take part in many social activities or consider marriage. 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. But a report commissioned by the South African government recorded a shocking 322 deaths of young boys between 2021 and 2024 and thousands more hospitalizations. It lays the blame at the door of criminal gangs who have set up unscrupulous illegal initiation schools that use untrained surgeons and "nurses" who botch surgeries. 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 severe dehydration are the main cause of death even though it has been reported unwilling boys 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 parents to pay to get their sons back. The Customary Initiation Act has now been introduced to make it illegal for unregistered initiation schools to be set up and force all traditional surgeons to be trained and qualified. Police now have the power 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 hundreds of years, despite the very high death rate. The worst of the injuries occur from botched circumcisions carried out by tribal “nurses” who may use the same spear for many boys, which causes mass infection. The wounds are tightly wrapped with bandages that cut off the blood supply to the area, and within 10 hours, the genitals can become gangrenous and need amputation.
Credit: DW