READER LETTER | Some rituals must be discarded

The Jukskei drowning incident that led to the death of at least 14 people including a toddler, is heartbreaking. It is even worse as this is one of those incidents that could have been easily avoided given how aware and advanced society has become.

The former Constitutional Court judge, Justice Albie Sachs, in one of his books – Protecting Human Rights in a New South Africa – makes the following compelling submission: “No one should be compelled by the state or by anybody to believe, nor should anyone be forced not to believe. Belief by its nature is something personal and intrinsic to the individual.

“It belongs to the conscience of each one of us, but also has a social dimension, a cultural dimension, even a national dimension. The state should be neither theocratic nor atheist, but secular, tolerant; and accepting of the deep importance religion has for millions of South Africans.”

While I aligned myself with the above submission, I feel emotionally drained and hurt by how our people, more especially the poor and the vulnerable, are often sacrificed, brutalised, de-humanised and demeaned all in the name of passage to manhood, tradition, culture and religion.

It is my considered view that some of the cultural, traditional and religious practices and rituals are old, tired and outdated; and need to be either completely discarded or reviewed to ensure that we prevent unnecessary annual deaths, bodily injuries and initiates losing their manhood.

Constitutional bodies such as the CRL Rights Commission must be nudged to take their mandate beyond the mere protection and promotion of the cultural, religious and linguistic community rights. They must stop being reactive at all times just like some of the other constitutional bodies.

The CRL Rights Commission must urgently develop very clear, specific and unambiguous regulations, not guidelines that must be taken into consideration and applied whenever there is a need to perform any of the cultural, traditional and religious practices that we all know that may result in unnecessary deaths and severe bodily injuries.

Deaths, bodily injuries, initiates losing their manhood in Eastern Cape and congregants drowning during baptism rituals are certainly avoidable.

Lesego Sechaba Mogotsi, Tshwane