Image: GETTY IMAGES/ BRENT STIRTON
In mid-March, the Eastern Cape government issued a directive for the immediate suspension of ulwaluko (initiation) in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Eastern Cape House of Traditional Leaders concurs with the government and has appealed to subjects to respect the call.
While the idea is noble and meant to save lives, compliance will prove challenging as the pronouncement has far-reaching cultural and social implications. Rather, we suggest some low-risk avenues for the province to explore to avoid both ruinous implications for initiates and outbreak responses to Covid-19.
The Eastern Cape already faces a number of challenges relating to ulwaluko, having arguably tried, and often brutally failed, to regulate the custom in the past. Between June 2006 and December 2019, 845 initiates died, 320 had penile amputations and 8,156 were admitted to hospital. This is an average of 65 deaths per year. The figures paint a sad picture indeed.
However, as Mbuyiselo Douglas has shown in his research, the custom enjoys wide popularity despite the death of initiates. In most cases death is a result of failure to comply with provincial directives and legislation governing the ritual.
Compliance with social distancing is a huge challenge in the fight against Covid-19. In the past few weeks we have witnessed how funerals have been epicentres for the virus to spread from. As people practice their traditions during funerals, it is clear the lockdown restrictions have been disregarded.
In responding to the global pandemic it is necessary to come up with strategies that go beyond biomedical approaches to embrace localised knowledge systems. Strategies that may be perceived as scolding people for holding funerals or continuing with traditional rituals should be avoided. We must understand that there are cultural practices and ways of grieving that people hold dear to their hearts, many of which they were historically denied.
There has to be deeper engagement and overt respect for people’s traditions. Militarised and authoritarian approaches, as we have seen many times, do not yield positive outcomes with ulwaluko. Effective outbreak responses, as demonstrated by the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, requires working with “the traditional sector” to find ways and modifications to cultural practices that both protect lives and yet are culturally resonant.
Unlike funerals, stopping traditional initiation will be a lot more complicated if the process has started, especially the surgical component. Moreover, stopping the process would have huge health, social and cultural implications for the initiate. Writing as cultural insiders as well as social scientists, we are acutely aware of the need for cultural acuity in dealing with this matter.
From observation and experience, the Eastern Cape remains vastly a rural province. While we do not glamorise the socio-economic barriers and challenges in rural contexts, rural areas provide a perfect space to manoeuvre around physical distancing. In such settings and provided the area has not witnessed any initiate deaths before, ulwaluko could be allowed to take place in spite of the lockdown. Homecoming ceremonies (umgidi) could perhaps be postponed to a later date because of the dangers of mass gatherings. Umgeno (a small ceremony held before initiates leave for the mountain) would be enough since it can be conducted by a few family members.
While we cannot in one article ever fully engage on the complexities of ulwaluko, we certainly want to provoke our provincial leadership to start thinking critically and reimagining a localised initiation response.
As has been demonstrated with funerals, authoritative approaches that tell people to simply toe the line have never yielded positive results. Our prediction is that with ulwaluko we will face a similar response. However, the social, health and economic costs to families and the initiates are too high to ignore. A multidisciplinary approach is urgently needed in the Eastern Cape to effectively respond to the pandemic outbreak in the context of ulwaluko.
By Gcobani Qambela
