Your guide to people, places, and happenings in NMB

MVUME NDIMBA | 041Culture

⚠️ Mature Content Warning
This column contains frank and personal reflections on traditional initiation practices, mental health, sexuality, and grief. Reader discretion is advised.

I can’t explain how much I enjoy speaking to people who live completely different lives from me…

This simple exercise of just asking and answering questions honestly has such a powerful way of dissolving preconceived notions and creating a new baseline of understanding between people, naturally creating common ground and making the distance we feel between us as a species feel much less daunting.

So at this point, you should be wondering what I’m waffling about now.
And the answer is quite obviously circumcision as a rite of passage among young men… obviously…

For the uninitiated (pun intended), there is an age-old tradition in our country, every June and December, where boys are sent away to the “bush” to become men.

Characterised by the sudden appearance of shanty-town-like settlements and young men covered in white paint and in various states of undress, the initiation process is one that all Black South African men go through (apart from the Zulus – but that’s Shaka’s fault).

In my little world, this is a magical time. A season of celebration and joy as we count down the days until the “new man” returns from the wilderness – stronger, wiser, and with a renewed understanding of and appreciation for the lifestyles their parents provided.

We’re taught that your life is never meant to be harder than it was in that month of initiation. And while I can’t share the full intricacies of the process, I can share the lessons I personally took from it.

But in the broader world, this is a season of death, suffering and loss. Each year, we see headlines of young men who went to “the mountain” never to return.

Stories of unlicensed practitioners, con artists who prey on families, botched ceremonies, and neglected wounds.
Depending on where you sit, you either see initiation as a life-altering journey into strength and manhood or a brutal relic of a barbaric past.

We, the initiated, don’t have simple answers.
Ask us if we regret it? The answer is an emphatic no.
Ask if we’d do it again? F** no—not even if Mandela himself came back and asked.*

Initiation is complicated, made even more so by the secrecy we are sworn to uphold.
Part of becoming a man is learning to handle adversity in silence. To not advertise your pain to the world. To bear your cross alone.

And this is where the idea for this column came from: the silence.

It’s the same silence that costs lives every year.
Every man there is there for the first time. Even if you’ve been for other reasons, you’re an initiate only once. And in that moment, we are all completely ignorant.

Many of us come from cities and are suddenly expected to survive in rural wilderness. Limited food. No comfort. No clear guidance.
Without older men to guide us, many of us wouldn’t have made it back either.

But many young boys don’t have that support.
Their mothers, sisters, and grandmothers don’t know how to prepare them, because no one ever told them.
The information dies with us as men.

I remember sitting in my dirty hut, hearing from my white friends who were at Rage in Plett at the same time—living their own rite of passage.
Meanwhile, I was nursing a sensitive wound in a sensitive area… and yes, it still works. But trust me—if you’re not careful, you will tear something. It’s audible.

But I digress.

This is about shame.
The lesson we’re taught: suffer in silence. Bear your cross. Don’t cry. Don’t complain. And this dangerous silence extends beyond the bush.

My friend quickly saw the connection between this experience and… marriage.

No one prepares you for what comes after the wedding. The world stops talking after the “I do”.
TV rolls credits. But in real life, the movie only starts there.

Nobody tells you the real stuff:

• That your wife might not feel like being intimate, and it’s worth talking about instead of blaming her.
• That screaming at your partner for two years doesn’t work – maybe try something else.
• That “providing” isn’t the same as being present.

Instead, we mirror that boy in the bush.
Suffering in silence.
Applying the right lesson at the wrong time.

Eventually, the silence grows.
The laughter disappears.
The sex becomes mechanical.
You stop seeing each other.
And when it all falls apart, the shame keeps you quiet.

You could teach others, but instead you hide—ashamed of failure, of truth, of looking weak.

Shame robs your suffering of meaning.
It makes your pain pointless.
It creates holes in your soul that you just throw things into and hope they disappear.

So this June… I urge you:
Think of that young man. Somewhere in Motherwell or Greenbushes or Grahamstown.
Think of him when the shame swells.

Resist the urge to be silent.
Share your suffering.
Make your pain a lesson.
Or we’ll see your name in the December headlines.

And finally—
To all my Xhosa brothers: Happy International Whores Day, observed on June 2nd, 2025.
In some ways, shame still holds us.
But in this? We lead the pack, gents. Well done.

Love,
— A Shameless Brother

PS: To anyone who has lost a loved one in initiation or fears they might this June—please speak up.
The community around you wants to help.
You are loved.
You are needed.
Come home safe, ndoda.