Cape Town – The Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa) is calling on parents to be cautious against illegal initiation schools.
The house of traditional leaders is calling on parents to do due diligence to protect initiates from attending illegal initiations.
This follows after the traditional congress revealed at least 20 initiates have lost their lives as a result of illegal initiation practices in the Eastern Cape during this summer and some parents have raised complaints about the costs of the process.
Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, Contralesa president Kgoshi Mathupa Mokoena, said Eastern Cape had young people who graduated a few years back but want to be at the forefront of conducting initiations at these schools.
“Those guys are inexperienced and they know nothing about the initiation process because they have just graduated from it and that is the problem we are facing. As Contralesa we are saying this is a normal challenge but also a national disaster and it needs extraordinary measures.
“These are actual extraordinary measures, this means that we identify those people who are given a responsibility to look after those kids to be punished severely and they should be arrested as soon as possible,” Mokoena adds.
Mokoena further confirmed that the 20 initiates who died were from the OR Tambo region in the Eastern Cape and they were asking themselves money questions because some provinces do not experience such a number of deaths.
“We want to make the Eastern Cape our pilot project to see exactly why they are not doing good during initiation seasons.
“I have been part of initiation schools since 1970 and you cannot treat children the way we were treated. We were told that some of the initiates are deprived of water for not less than three weeks and some of the traditional surgeons are inexperienced,” he said.
IOL