The Limpopo House of Traditional Leaders will work hand in glove with the provincial government, families of the initiates and all relevant stakeholders to ensure that there are no death cases at this year’s initiation schools programme scheduled to commence on Saturday and end on 17 July.
Chairperson of the House, Malesela Dikgale called upon parents to authenticate the legitimacy of initiation schools they intend to send their children with their respective Traditional Authorities. “It is our wish and commitment as Limpopo House of Traditional Leaders that during this initiation season, no lives should be lost. We lost two lives last year and don’t want a repeat of that.
“Our province has an impressive record of running cultural initiation schools. Traditional leadership at all levels in the province has institutionalised the practice with effective governance systems. We want to commend all the relevant stakeholders and encourage them to keep to that standard. In an effort to prevent the unnecessary loss of lives, we request parents to send their children to the initiation schools that are approved,” Dikgale said.
He also stressed that there will be zero tolerance towards people who want to take chances by running initiation schools without permits. “We also want to re-emphasise that we will not be lenient to people who will be running illegal initiation schools. As the house we will not rest until all perpetrators who would have been discovered to have violated all initiation schools regulations have been brought to book. We will work with law our enforcement agencies, to prevent the unnecessary loss of young lives and also to ensure that the rights of this young people are not violated,” Dikgale said.
For the upcoming season the house approved 272 initiation schools from 294 applications in all the districts. Sekhukhune tops the list with 110 schools, Capricorn with 40, Mopani 30, Waterberg 79 and Vhembe 13.
Story and photo: Herbert Rachuene
>>herbert@mailbox.co.za
