CIRCUMCISION

For some it’s barbaric,for others a religious imperative. But why,asks SALLY FELDMAN,is circumcision still the most frequently performed operation in the world?

Slice of life

Image: The Circumcision, Giovanni Bellini, 1459 © National Gallery

Last year, 21 boys bled to death after a botched circumcision ceremony in the Eastern Cape. They were members of the Xhosa ethnic group, where circumcision is performed as part of an elaborate ritual marking the coming of age of young men. The boys are removed from the general population and stay in specially made tents, where they are covered in white clay as a sign of separation from childhood. And the pain is intended to test the courage of the boys. In his autobiography Long Walk to FreedomNelson Mandela recalls his own Xhosa initiation as he stood

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in line waiting for his turn, then came face to face with the circumciser: “Without a word, he took my foreskin, pulled it forward, and then, in a single motion, brought down his assegai. I felt a if fire was shooting through my veins; the pain was so intense that I buried my chin in my chest… Then I recovered and called out, ‘Ndiyindoda!’ [I am a man]” The operation is designed to be terrifying, according to anthropologist Nigel Barley, who spent months in Cameroon investigating the circumcision rites of the Dowayo tribe. “The boys are stripped naked at the crossroads and led to the riverside grove

where the cutting is to be performed. On the way they are leapt upon by the circumcisers who are growling like hunting leopards and threatening them with knives.” Similarly gory ceremonies take place among the Merino of Madagascar as well as many Australian aboriginal tribes. Since the Xhosa ceremony went so tragically wrong, demands have grown in South Africa for tighter regulations to control these initiation practices. Rationalists, of course, tend to dismiss all forms of circumcison as yet another appalling cruelty enacted in the name of religion. But rather than