Foto: Shane Rounce op Unsplash
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Almost every culture has some form of rites of passage, especially from adolescence to adulthood. In Western inherited culture such rites from developmental phase into adulthood are usually performed in schools, where an initiate is compelled to undergo quick changes of learning that may involve pain and confusion like a snake shedding off its old skin of identity for a new one.
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Almost every culture has some form of rites of passage, especially from adolescence to adulthood. In Western inherited culture such rites from developmental phase into adulthood are usually performed in schools, where an initiate is compelled to undergo quick changes of learning that may involve pain and confusion like a snake shedding off its old skin of identity for a new one. The news of such happenings within residential establishments of universities, like in Stellenbosch University, is no news. The concern is what they consist of or how far they go. And whether they involve some unacceptable cultural/racial/ethnic/misogynistic practices and rituals.
I am sure that anyone who, like me, grew up within the environment of a boarding school has experienced the so-called initiation rituals meted out to newcomers. In some schools it is a decent rite of passage designed to orientate you not only to the customs of the institution but of life in general. It toughens you a bit, teaching you independence, life skills and learning to stand up for yourself.
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In some cases the rituals go too far, especially when they aim to humiliate rather than equip the initiate with maturity. Since standard 4, or grade 6 in today's system, I have been at boarding school. So I know a thing or two about this practice. In our junior secondary years at Cwele Missionary School in Libode the practice verged on the savage.
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In some cases the rituals go too far, especially when they aim to humiliate rather than equip the initiate with maturity. Since standard 4, or grade 6 in today's system, I have been at boarding school. So I know a thing or two about this practice. In our junior secondary years at Cwele Missionary School in Libode the practice verged on the savage. There were even reported rumours of iqwatsi, newcomers, being “kept” by amagqala. The veiled assumption of the word kept was that the newcomers became “wives” of older members of the school who slept with them at night or sodomised them. In my time at the school there was never any real reported evidence of this, although I remember the unscheduled departure of the only male teacher in the school who left in rushed humiliation. It was said that he had been sodomising some boys in our dormitory. The other teachers at our school were females and mostly nuns. I despised the initiation rituals at Cwele for being almost macabre in nature, cruel manual work rather than these sexual rumoured innuendos.
In our high school, Freemantle High in Lady Frere, the rituals were innocuous and rather fruitful if anything. The worse of them was being woken up at 2 am for gym and such things. Even this had tremendous benefits of making us fit as fiddles during competitive sports like athletics. We would be driven and hit with belts by amagqala on a 7 km marathon to the hospital entrance, kwaNonkuzi, where we were drilled for an hour or so. It was easy to avoid that rubbish by waking up ten minutes or so before the bell to hide on the open fields or in staff cottage gardens. There we would hide under peach and apricot trees stealing the fruit and coming back with upset stomachs. The only other manual tasks designated for newcomers were things like cleaning toilets and setting dining table for meals. Though meant to be some sort of a punishment, setting was an enjoyable task – for one, you made sure to heap your own dish, and those of your favourites, to an extent of hiding more meat under the samp and beans dish. My best and lifetime friends actually turned out to be some members of the table I set for. Every table had a setter and a head, someone from a senior class.
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As a Xhosa I also had to undergo similar rituals during the school of circumcision. It is here in our culture where a shift from individualistic mentality of impulse and self-interest is compelled to transform to one that conforms to the collective of the immediate social group. The group here might be a clan, tribe, nation and so on.
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As a Xhosa I also had to undergo similar rituals during the school of circumcision. It is here in our culture where a shift from individualistic mentality of impulse and self-interest is compelled to transform to one that conforms to the collective of the immediate social group. The group here might be a clan, tribe, nation and so on. It is mostly imposed by the members of your clan who have a right to dress your wound without due consideration of your privacy, etc. There also sometimes arises an element of abuse if you don't have elder relatives protecting you like your own father or uncle. As such, almost all the problems emanating from this tradition have their effects, like the decline and destruction of the family structure. This is where you mostly are suppose to learn and understand your own family links and history.
By the time I got to university, Wits in my case, there were some forms of low-key rituals during the orientation week, but they were innocuous and mostly fun, involving romantically pairing the newcomers for the entertainment of older students. I was in an all black house (Glyn Thomas House) that was situated at the then Baragwanath (Chris Hani) Hospital. It was the late ’80s to early ’90s, so we had bigger fish to fry. The country was burning politically, and the apartheid security police, especially the Special Branch, were our adversaries. We forged stronger bonds to look after one another for real survival than abusive initiation rituals among ourselves. The likes of Terry Tselane, former deputy chairperson of the IEC, are alumni and luminaries of Glyn Thomas. We lost Bheki Mlangeni at the dawn of democracy through the parcel bomb that was sent by apartheid security forces. They even shot at us on a university bus while we were returning from burying David Webster, whom they had assassinated. My point is that we had much more serious things occupying us then than silly initiation rituals.
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By the time I got to university, Wits in my case, there were some forms of low-key rituals during the orientation week, but they were innocuous and mostly fun ... The country was burning politically, and the apartheid security police, especially the Special Branch, were our adversaries. We forged stronger bonds to look after one another for real survival than abusive initiation rituals among ourselves.
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We were aware of the initiation rituals in the other campus residential houses that housed mostly white students, in particular at Men's Res. They were regarded as some form of tradition and mostly involved over-imbibing alcohol. We heard of the existence of secret guilds which we naturally assumed were Broederbond-like in nature, thus in opposition to our political activism and organisations. We were acutely aware of our rivalry based on skin colour and politics even if we pretended to be normal fellow students during the day. We hardly mixed beyond the necessary academic activities, a tricky thing for some of us who attended faculties like architecture, where you were 98% surrounded by a sea of white people.
If there is anything in common between the rigour of the English boarding school system I grew up in and the staunch Calvinism of Afrikaners of, say, Stellenbosch University, it is the belief that young men in particular need to be toughened up to prepare them for life. It is the reason why, though known to authorities, these rituals and rites of passages are tolerated and ignored until they go too far, as they sometimes do. I would not even be surprised in institutions like Stellies if they're found to have a misogynistic and racial flavour, because of historical background. It is my strong belief that these things are anachronistic and have no role to play in our current societies. Those who want to learn life skills and prepare for the rigours of life can join regulated bodies that are run by professionals if they desire such preparation.
Also read:
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