A project to establish an initiation village for urban Xhosa was launched by the Western Cape provincial government on the Cape Flats on Tuesday.
The initiative, the first in the country, seeks to provide space for what is essentially a rural custom in a city setting.
In its purest form, groups of newly circumcised young men are required to spend a period isolated in makeshift shelters in the bush or veld, a ritual difficult to observe on the periphery of crowded townships.
A spokesperson for the Western Cape’s environment affairs department, Ossie Gibson, said the idea of an initiation village followed a workshop held at Langa in March 2001, and a series of public participation meetings.
The department has provided R1,2-million seed money towards the project, which will take shape on an allocated site of a few hectares within the 650ha Driftsands nature reserve near Khayelitsha.
The ”community” will have to decide how to run the village, but money has been allocated for site works, landscaping and other facilities, including a slaughter slab.
It is envisaged that about 600 youths will go through the facility every year.
Gibson said there are one million people living within a 7km radius of the site. — Sapa