[DRAFT] Infirm Initiates

[New Socialist South Africa]

Title: Infirm Initiates

Validity: Medium to high levels of civil rights, religiousness and / or primitiveness

The Issue

An eighteen-year-old boy, @@RANDOMNAMEMALE_1@@, recently died during a traditional month-long initiation into manhood. These secretive initiation ceremonies are held in remote rural areas, and lead to a slew of hospitalisations and several deaths every year. Various groups are now calling for these potentially deadly initiation ceremonies to be banned.

The Debate

Option 1. “You have to ban this barbarism” begs @@RANDOMNAMEMALE_1@@’s mother, while clutching a picture of her son. “My boy went away thinking he was going to become a man, but the brutal initiation he was put through cost him his life. How many more boys are we going to sacrifice in the name of tradition?”
Consequence: ceremonial initiations into manhood now include hiding from the police

Option 2. “These practices have been passed down for hundreds of years, they are an integral part of our culture” orates @@RANDOMNAMEMALE_2@@, an elder who oversees many traditional initiation ceremonies. “We do not force any boys to take part, they come to us willingly. Yes, some of our initiates tragically do pass on, but these are the risks of the difficult process of becoming a man. We will not deny boys the opportunity to become men in order to satisfy modern hysteria”.
Consequence: “becoming a man” is often considered an extreme sport

Option 3. “What if the government regulated these initiation ceremonies?” muses @@RANDOMNAME@@, your conciliatory Minister of Health. “We could ensure that the ceremonies are held in clean and sanitary environments, and that they are much shorter and less brutal. We could even require that a medical professional supervise each one. Sure, the traditionalists might complain about the tweaks to the ceremony, but it’s better than an outright ban, or standing by while boys die”.
Consequence: ceremonial initiations into manhood now include getting a lollipop afterwards

Please let me know if you have any recommendations of where I can fix and polish up this issue. Thanks

[Australian rePublic]

Secret ceremony? If leader is a man over the age 18, wouldn't he know exactly what happens at these ceremonies? If leader is a woman, then someone else in her cabinet would.

These ceremonies are optional- oh, never mind, carry on

[New Socialist South Africa]

Secret ceremony? If leader is a man over the age 18, wouldn't he know exactly what happens at these ceremonies? If leader is a woman, then someone else in her cabinet would.

These ceremonies are optional- oh, never mind, carry on

Ya, the issue is based on Ulwaluko, which is a secretive circumcision and initiation into manhood ceremony that many amaXhosa teenage boys, and teenage boys of other groups take part in South Africa. At least one South African President, Nelson Mandela, did go through the ceremony, which he briefly alluded to in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, without going into details about the initiation itself, in order to maintain its secrecy.

I've left what actually goes on in the ceremonies intentionally vague by just describing them as secretive initiation ceremonies, both as I thought that talking about circumcision might make the issue a bit too explicit, and as I don't know all the details as someone who never went through the ceremony myself (I'm not Xhosa, and so I didn't really have the option to take part in the ceremony even if I had wanted to). Also it allows people to use their own imaginations to fill in the details, rather than trying to talk about the details of a secretive ceremony that I'm no expert on.

Indeed, a movie that was made about the rituals, called Inxeba / The Wound, which deals with the complexity of gay Xhosa men who take part in the ceremony, who often do so with the added purpose to claim a sense of manhood in a society than can be very homophobic (even while the official constitution and laws of the land are very progressive on LGBT+ rights). The movie got a lot of criticism locally for depicting the events of the ceremony, but there were also some homophobic undertones to the criticism.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

More technical detail within the issue premise would help. Describe the injuries he suffered, the cultural context for the rite, and the complications. But be concise, of course.

[New Socialist South Africa]

More technical detail within the issue premise would help. Describe the injuries he suffered, the cultural context for the rite, and the complications. But be concise, of course.

Noted. I've become a bit busy lately, but when I have the chance I will.