PODCAST: We speak to M&G reporter Faranaaz Parker about government's apparent inability to track the rising number of circumcision deaths in SA.
In July 2012, the Mail & Guardian was given access to some initiation schools in the Eastern Cape and invited to a few families that were celebrating the homecoming of initiates.
To one small group of initiates, the option of surgical cutting had been introduced, a decision we were told had been discussed by the families involved as they handed their children over to the appointed custodian of the initiation process. The practice of surgical circumcision, hailed in some quarters as the most progressive and effective way of curbing deaths, was still something to be ashamed of as it was deemed a deviation from the authenticity of the custom.
Our hosts told us to shoot what we wanted, but not to mention that the circumcisions were being done surgically. In that season, sources from the Eastern Cape department of health told the M&G that well over 40 boys had died and several hundred had been hospitalised, with a handful having to undergo amputations.
Mayenzeke Baza's 24-minute documentary Ndiyindoda explores issues of best practice as well as wider issues of secrecy and the exclusion of women from this rite of passage. Importantly, a woman who lost her son during the ritual and an initiate who lost his penis speak of their personal experiences. The filmmaker, Baza, himself a former initiate, pulls no punches about where he stands on the issue of medical circumcision. "The cutting part should be a medical process," he says. "The initiation is a bigger thing. Deaths could be prevented if we could introduce medical practices."
Baza believes casualties have probably always been a part of the process, but the glare of the media and the commodification of the process have combined to create the impression of a cultural practice gone awry. "When a boy died you just didn't see them," he says. "When death happened it was accepted by the society, but now, we can't allow children to die. There were deaths before but to a lesser extent than now because it was controlled; for instance in the way the elders took care of that wound. Today it is totally different. It is about business, money … Then, if someone died it was taken as if they were meant to die; that it was the will of the ancestors or that they were bewitched. It was like a boys' club and witchcraft was associated with women and so [that's one of the reasons] women weren't allowed near the custom."
That Baza is still an advocate of the practice is clear in some of the choices he makes in the film. He steers clear from depicting any actual circumcision, opting instead to shoot a haircut to symbolise the beginning of the process. "For me it was also about access. For me to gain access, I needed to respect the tradition. Whether or not I show the cutting doesn't change the way I tell the story. You choose what you want to show."
Baza also dispels widely held beliefs that the problem of botched circumcisions is confined to the Mpondoland area of the province. "The boys that died in my film are not Mpondo. What motivated me to do this story, in fact, was my brother. He had a friend who died. Mpondoland represents an outbreak of what has been happening in other parts. So that can be used [by traditional leaders and the broader society] in a way that seems to suggest "we [Xhosa people] are better." Mpondoland might be a hot spot but we can't ignore other areas.
Baza, whose film was also broadcast on Al-Jazeera, is already working on a feature-length follow up to the documentary, which he says will substantially explore what happens in the three or four weeks boys spend in seclusion.
Ndiyidoda is being screened on Wednesday, June 12 at 7pm at The Bioscope in the Maboneng Precinct as part of the Encounters documentary film festival.