A warning that neglect continues at legal and illegal initiation schools prompted an investigation.
Picture for illustration. Picture: Gallo Images / Sowetan / Thulani Mbele
Initiates, young children embarking on a rite of passage into manhood or womanhood, are still dying.
As the winter initiation season comes to a close, it appears that calls for safe, responsible and dignified initiation practices continue to fall on deaf ears.
After recording 43 initiation-related deaths nationally this year, a formal investigation into unsafe and illegal initiation schools has been launched.
What the investigation is and isn’t
The Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL) said on Tuesday that the probe would target criminality and regulatory failures that allow illegal, commercialised initiation schools to operate, not the sacred rituals themselves.
“[It] is not an attack on the cultural institution of initiation,” the commission emphasised, saying it will instead investigate “criminality, negligence, and regulatory failures.”
It follows mounting evidence that the Customary Initiation Act (CIA) of 2021 is not being enforced and that systemic gaps have allowed criminal syndicates to profit from initiation schools.
The committee will focus on how illegal schools sprout, why local systems fail to protect children and the bottlenecks that prevent prosecution of rogue actors.
Deaths, hotspots and causes
The CRL reported 43 national fatalities linked to initiation practices so far this year, with the highest tolls in Mpumalanga (18) and the Eastern Cape (14), and smaller counts in North West (4), Limpopo (3), Gauteng (2) and the Free State (2).
Typical causes of death cited include severe dehydration, advanced septicaemia, untreated infections, exposure to harsh winter conditions and “gross surgical complications arising from botched circumcisions”.
The commission flagged Mpumalanga, Gauteng, Free State and North West as provinces that are regressing and in need of thorough investigation to determine underlying causes.
History repeating itself
The CRL said it had previously intervened in Gauteng, where abductions, gangsterism and deaths prompted recommendations for the suspension of initiation activities, including a two-year province-wide suspension and an additional one-year extension in Sedibeng.
Other provinces include notable incidents of fatalities and botched circumcisions in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo.
The 2025 summer initiation season concluded with 50 initiates losing their lives.
Reflecting on this two months before the start of the winter initiation season, acting chief director of the Eastern Cape House of Traditional Leaders, Vuyo Stofile, said one reason for the deaths is that parents intervene in customary practices.
He told parliament that Inkhankatha, who are traditional masses that oversee initiates, aren’t in full control.
“What we have picked up, even in legal schools, there’s a lot of neglect.
“There are parents who are instructing the traditional masses not to provide initiates with water.
“We need to apply the same pressure to legal schools as we do to illegal ones,” he said.
