The controversial summer Ulwaluko rite, carried out by the Xhosa people in South Africa, has concluded for 2025, leaving 39 boys dead.
The traditional ceremony, in which initiates are circumcised, designates the transition from child to man.
The majority of criticism lies with the illegal initiation schools, which officials say endanger the lives of their students by employing untrained physicians who often accidentally botch the circumcisions.
“I was, of course, very scared of going,” 19-year-old Scotty Dawka said in 2015 when he went through the rites, the Guardian reported at the time.
“I wanted to be looked up to as a man in my village by the elders. It was very painful to go through, and I fell ill, but I was treated and survived.”
Eastern Cape provincial chairperson Athol Trollip, of Action SA, a local political party, wrote in 2023: “The bulk of deaths are caused by illegal initiation schools run by opportunistic and unqualified individuals.”
In launching the year’s winter initiation season, the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Velenkosini Hlabisi, vowed to reduce the death toll greatly.
“All initiation schools are accountable and any school that contravenes the law and endangers lives then the law is unequivocal and they will be closed down at once,” Hlabisi said in a statement.
“We cannot accept any more deaths and owe it to these young men and their families to ensure their journey into adulthood is safe, dignified and respected, and of course safe.”
The fatalities this year were indeed fewer.
In 2024, complications due to faulty tools — old spears and razor blades were reportedly used on dozens of boys without being sanitized in between — led to a shocking 93 deaths and 11 amputations.
Over the past five years, 361 boys have died, the Daily Mail reported.
Ulwaluko has been criticized by several public officials and notable figures in South Africa, including Desmond Tutu, who spoke about it back in 2014.
“The guardians of South African health and culture must find the means to work together to protect the sanctity of our traditional practices,” he said in a statement then.
Tutu also entreated traditional leadership “to draw on the skills of qualified medical practitioners to enhance our traditional circumcision practices.
“We must protect these practices, but we must avoid placing too much focus on the physical and psychological ordeal,” he said.
As part of the ceremony, boys in their late teens take part in a lengthy, secluded rite that reportedly designates successful participants as responsible, disciplined and spiritually pure adult men.
“In my community, a lot of boys went through initiation. That is why I had to do it because I wanted to be the same as them. I wanted to be a man,” 19-year-old Aubrey Nkinqa told the Guardian in 2015.
Former Health Minister Zweli Mkhize proposed that schools no longer offer the rite in the summer, as a majority of deaths happen as a result of dehydration, gangrene and sepsis — all of which are often exacerbated by hot, dry summer conditions.
