At least 41 young men have died as a result of circumcision procedures as part of traditional initiation activities in South Africa in November and December, authorities said Tuesday.
South Africa’s Traditional Affairs Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa told local broadcasters Tuesday that 41 initiates died during this year’s summer initiation. He blamed negligence on the part of both the initiation schools, including registered ones, and parents for not adhering to safety standards and medical advice.
Hlabisa said some of the unproven advice often given to the young men is to avoid drinking water in order to heal faster.
See also: ritual dietary laws like the pork taboo. The Philistines ate pork. There’s no evidence that they were less healthy or had shorter lifespans than their neighbors. The ecological arguments are similarly fact-free-- no contemporary sources say even one word about it. And the Chinese, from ancient times, had dietary laws regarding pork: basically, don’t eat it raw or you’ll get sick. That was actually adaptive, but religious rituals often are not. They’re more about in-group conformity and social control-- oppression to serve the ruling elite. The idea that all those arbitrary laws were for your own good is a brainless Just So story that originated in Victorian Panglossian pseudoscience.