SCRUTINISE!!!!
According to statistics, Kwazulu-Natal has the highest HIV prevalence in the country. And it’s all because of that old rogue and founder of the powerful Zulu nation, King Shaka. It was he, you see, who decided that young Zulu men should not waste the kingdom’s time going to circumcision schools but should rather use that time training for the army so that mfecane could be done and done well. Fortunately for the province of Kwazulu-Natal, a progressive monarch is now in power. King Goodwil Zwelithini knows that the warriors are no longer necessary thanks to the SANDF and therefore has seen fit to ‘turn HIV to HI Victory’. Women all over KZN must be celebrating because men will be getting circumcised again thereby reducing the chances of infecting them. KZN Premier, Zweli Mkhize agrees, but in order to avoid the many deaths and the botched circumcisions in the Eastern Cape that make ‘men who are not men,’ to paraphrase a certain Mr. Mgqolozana’s book, young men will get circumcised at government hospitals until legal circumcision schools are up and running – hopefully by June, in time for 2010 World Cup (I am not sure whether soccer tourists who are keen to undergo the experience can be accommodated).
I sure hope it works. Yeah I know I sound a tad negative but I just lost a circumcised relation to an HIV-related illness. The way I hear it, he may have got infected after his circumcision. Word has it that Vuyo (that was his name) spent the celebratory post-circumcision night with a girl who most people but he, knew was infected with the illness. I certainly hope that the Eastern Cape of ‘cleansing’ oneself after circumcision is not the same as the KZN way otherwise there might be little change in the rate of infection. Also, is his Highness really certain that there will not be opportunistic folks who will set up circumcision schools with little or no experience after June and cause botched circumcisions a la Eastern Cape?
Given the number of HIV orphans we have in the country, I personally welcome any initiative that reduces this scourge, as I am sure the rest of South Africa does but perhaps the monarch needs to add circumcision to other solutions? Like say for instance, discouraging 70 year old males from taking a fifth wife who is 19 years old and generally discouraging multiple partners?
And then again what do I know? I am uncultured.
PS – I wonder whether this means my male Zulu friends will now be abducted a la Fikile so that they can go entabeni?!?!
It was finally admitted in August that the HIV+ men circumcised for the large African HIV/circumcision experiments were found 50% MORE likely to transmit HIV to female partners than the HIV+ men they left intact were. This offsets the supposed 60% reduction in risk for males getting infected.
Most of the US men who have died of AIDS were circumcised at birth. Obviously circumcision is neither necessary nor sufficient to thwart AIDS.