My wee populist Jan Sandile was born nearly 6 years ago in Baltimore. My then-wife (a radical Afrikaner) and I got the info on circumcision options from a Johns Hopkins midwife, and decided against. Back home in Johannesburg, though, the sensible public health approach seems to be pro-circumcision, because of hygiene + HIV/AIDS risks. But about twelve hours by road southeast of here, the most frightful process is the Xhosa tradition of circumcision, only performed (way out in the Eastern Cape hills) at the age of manhood. (There are, I'd guess, 2.5 million Xhosa males amongst SA's 40 million people.) And of course in a desperately poor situation in the Transkei/Ciskei countryside, this practice (performed by a clan elder) regularly leads to infection (yes, amputation is often the only solution, given how long it takes to identify and treat the problem in a backwards rural zone)--and then, in not a few cases, to death. One of my best friends, modernised through urban anti-apartheid politics at a young age, returned to his Xhosa kraal from Jo'burg, and announced he would do the manhood rites, but only at a local hospital. It went off painlessly thanks to morphine, and the clan was cool about it, knowing the risks up in the hills. The peasant boys keep coming down with infections, though, from bad cuts and no anti-inflammatories. And, to finally conclude, after the legacy of apartheid which left virtually no clinics in these "bantustan" homeland areas, and with a World Bank-designed structural adjustment programme clamping down hard on health spending, these fellows find themselves right in the middle of three oppressive systems: pre-capitalist cultural norms, residual apartheid-capitalist healthcare-scarcity, and post-apartheid neoliberal-capitalist austerity.
> From: "Dennis Perrin/Nancy Bauer" <bauerperrin at mindspring.com>
> I went through this debate just before my son was born nearly five years
> ago. My wife was adamantly opposed to circumcision. But for weeks I waffled,
> partly because I'm circumcised (and remember the ridicule heaped upon those
> boys in the high school showers who weren't), and partly because my father
> somewhat pressured me to have my son cut. After reading some pro- and
> anti-circumcision material, I reluctantly went with my wife. I'm glad I did,
> and am sorry I wasn't stronger about it. The day after my son's birth, the
> baby boy in the next hospital bed was suffering from an infection caused by
> circumcision. His screams of pain were chilling, and his mother's distress
> was evident. I felt really bad for them, and wondered why the mother allowed
> her son to be strapped down and cut in the first place. Perhaps it wasn't
> her decision. In any event, a cruel practice.
>
> DP
>
>
Patrick Bond (pbond at wn.apc.org) home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa phone: (2711) 614-8088 work: University of the Witwatersrand Graduate School of Public and Development Management PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa work email: bond.p at pdm.wits.ac.za work phone: (2711) 717-3917 work fax: (2711) 484-2729 cellphone: (27) 83-633-5548 * Municipal Services Project website -- http://www.queensu.ca/msp * to order new book: Cities of Gold, Townships of Coal -- http://store.yahoo.com/africanworld/865436126.html