The justice cluster task team in the Eastern Cape is now prioritising and reviewing criminal cases of traditional initiation and botched circumcisions where initiates died, were injured, or had penile amputations or underwent unlawful circumcisions.
Every year thousands of young boys are sent to the mountain to be initiated into manhood, and yet each initiation season, some end up coming home in body bags. According to statistics, as many as 1,500 initiates have died in the province since the early 1990s while undergoing the centuries-old sacred traditional custom of ulwaluko in the Eastern Cape.
While most male circumcisions performed in the Eastern Cape are done in the traditional manner, there are also significant numbers of medical male circumcisions being conducted.