Circumcision Season
By Melissa Meyer
27 July 2009 | Circumcision | The Media and HIV/AIDS
It is circumcision season again, and newspapers are telling stories of young Xhosa men who flock to the mountains where they subject themselves to mutilation and a certain risk of death.
The casualties have been dutifully tallied: towards the end of the June season, the Sunday Times reported 44 deaths, 270 maimed genitals and 13 penile amputations.
This has been a particularly gruesome initiation season and whilst there has been intelligent discussion in the media around issues of tradition and manhood, coupled with much-need exposure of illegally operating surgeons, the macabre stories of botched circumcisions seem to speak loudest.
A Sunday Times article, titled Circumcision Horror, quite graphically recounts the experience of young Zuko who lost his brother and his genitals during the initiation ritual. The article also tells of illegal traditional surgeons and careless elders. An accompanying article sets this against the broader context of circumcision as a business — generating large profits, attracting unethical practitioners and maiming young men.
Fortunately, some stories have been less about genitals and more about manhood (which one could argue, is the real issue at stake here). A Mail&Guardian article proposes that even circumcisions done in hospital (in this case on a gay man called Themba) can be an initiation into manhood. Compelling photographs of traditional circumcision initiates cleverly set Themba’s experience against that of young Xhosa men, suggesting that both experiences can be a part of ‘becoming a man’.
The star of this year’s circumcision drama, however, has been Thando Mgqolozana. In his debut novel A Man Who is Not a Man, Mgqolozana openly explores the repercussions of a botched ritual circumcision, which goes to the core of traditional notions of manhood. Fortunately for Mgqolozana, his book has generated as much publicity as it has outcry from traditional leaders.
Efforts like these to engage in meaningful dialogue around issues of ritual circumcision and manhood have made valuable headway in the debate around male circumcision. But is this enough?
Circumcision stories of another kind have been unfolding in South Africa, albeit rather quietly. They might not offer the enticing narrative of unfortunate genital amputations following treacherous journeys to the mountains, or an emancipating visit to a hospital, but they are equally, if not more pertinent.
Since January 2008 more than 9000 men have made their way to Orange Farm outside Johannesburg to be circumcised. Their journeys are not motivated by cultural norms or traditions but informed rather by scientific evidence that circumcised men are significantly less likely to contract or transmit HIV.
Macabre reports of botched ritual circumcision could easily discourage readers from getting “the snip” at a time when circumcision (in its medical sense) can be hugely beneficial to a country firmly in the clutches of a devastating AIDS epidemic. Whilst the Mail&Guardian article makes brief, though vague, mention of “the evidence about HIV and circumcision” the other articles discussed here fail to raise the issue at all.
Whilst it would be irresponsible to downplay the seriousness of botched traditional circumcisions, in the interest of HIV prevention, some distinction between the traditional and surgical procedure (and its benefits) is necessary.
Melissa Meyer is a researcher at the HIV/AIDS and the Media Project.
Peltzer, K. and Kanta, X. (2009) Medical circumcision and manhood initiation rituals in the Eastern Cape, South Africa: a post intervention evaluation.
