An Eastern Cape initiate was to appear in the Port Elizabeth Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday after allegedly killing a traditional surgeon with a spade.
Spokesperson Captain Ernest Sigobe said the 22-year-old initiate was apparently unhappy with the way in which he had been circumcised. ”He complained that the traditional surgeon had wrongly circumcised him, but did not say what exactly he did wrong.”
Sigobe said he invited the surgeon (58), from Zinyoka location in Port Elizabeth, to visit him in Sherwood location on Monday night.
”While they were walking on Buffalo Street, he repeatedly struck him with the sharp edge of the spade all over his body,” said Sigobe.
The man died on the scene. Police did not know where the accused got the spade.
The Eastern Cape health department said the initiate had preferred another surgeon to the one he allegedly killed. ”He allegedly wanted someone else to perform the surgery,” said spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo.
A murder case was opened with Port Elizabeth police, and the man was arrested two hours after the incident, Sigobe said. The spade he used was confiscated and will be used as evidence in court.
The attacker went to an initiation school in the area in May and the process was finished at the end of June.
More deaths
Last week, another youth died at an illegal initiation school and two were taken to hospital in critical conditions — one from a registered facility, Kupelo said. The death was the eighth since the start of the initiation season.
The 17-year-old boy’s body was found last Wednesday at an initiation school at Sbangweni village in Libode. Another initiate was taken to the Cecilia Makiwane hospital in East London in a critical condition with gangrene of his private parts. ”There were also signs that he was severely beaten up,” said Kupelo.
Police are investigating charges of assault, running an illegal initiation school and illegally conducting circumcisions. No one has been arrested yet, but at least four traditional surgeons are sought in the Transkei.
Initiates often die of infection, gangrene or sepsis. The boys stand in a queue to be circumcised, stealing chickens from villages to pay the surgeons. ”Our worry is that apart from dying, there is a high possibility that the boys would end up contracting HIV,” said Kupelo.
The second initiate was found in a critical condition at a registered school, he said. Two nurses at the school have been arrested for negligence. ”They are obliged to take action if they find initiates are not in good health.”
Kupelo said the arrests were made in raids by the police and departmental officials on a number of illegal and registered initiation schools in Mdantsane. More raids were planned in the Transkei — in the area of at least two of the deaths — in conjunction with the House of Traditional leaders. — Sapa