Two boys have been rescued from a Transkei initiation school after a so-called traditional surgeon cut off the ends of their penises, the Eastern Cape health department said on Friday.
Spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said the boys, plus a third youth, were found at the village of Swazini near Port St Johns.
”Their condition was terrible. With two of them, their glans penis had been removed by the traditional surgeon,” he said.
When police and department officials went to fetch the boys, they were threatened by the nurses whose role is to care for newly circumcised initiates. They had to call for back-up from the Port St Johns police.
Kupelo said the boys were in a critical but stable condition at the Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital in Mthatha. One of them had developed such severe sepsis that he could not walk.
The surgeon was arrested a week ago, before the boys were rescued, and is being charged with contravening the province’s circumcision laws.
Kupelo also said a man nicknamed ”the Crocodile” was arrested in Mdantsane on Thursday. He was allegedly part of a group of surgeons that circumcised at least 96 youths. This brought the total number of arrests of unregistered traditional surgeons since last week to 17.
Another surgeon arrested earlier in the week had confessed to police and department officials that he had illegally circumcised about 200 boys over a period of two weeks in the Port St Johns area.
”The chances are a number of [those] boys have been infected with HIV,” Kupelo said. — Sapa