LIMPOPO – A MENTALLY challenged 25-year-old died at the hands of an illegal initiation school in the Sekhukhune district on Sunday.

Spokesperson for the Limpopo police, Col Ronel Otto, said the patient arrived somehow at the Skinot initiation school where the surgeon circumcised him, allegedly without requesting permission from his parents.

On Sunday morning the man requested permission to go to the toilet whereafter he fled from the school.

A search was made by the head boys and the leadership of the school until they found him on the mountain. He was taken to a nearby clinic where he died.

An inquest was opened.

Also in Sekhukhune, a 14-year-old boy died at another initiation school on Tuesday.

“We can’t just arrest, we are waiting for the post mortem report and it is the mandate of the department of cooperative governance, human settlements and traditional affairs (Coghsta) to shutdown an illegal school,” Otto further explained.

Coghsta spokesperson, Motupa Selomo, referred CV to the Limpopo House of Traditional Leaders.

Chief Malesela Dikgale, chairperson of the Limpopo House of Traditional Leaders, said the Skinot school was illegal.

He said he found it difficult to understand why the surgeon circumcised the man without permission from his parents.

When asked why they did not have the surgeon arrested, he said they could not just go there and make arrests because there were ritual processes that should be followed if they moved the initiates from one place to another. “The biggest issue is that the Act in place is toothless. The Act still needs work.

“As government, we have absorbed the Skinot school to be under our control; the legal traditional leader.

“The Skinot school has 167 initiates. If they are not feeling well, where are we going to take them? It is better to transfer powers to a legitimate traditional leader who has permission,” Dikgale said.

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