‘Foreigners run bush schools’

FOREIGN nationals taking part in traditional circumcision have posed a new threat in the Tshwane metro’s efforts to curb illegal initiation schools and deaths.

The municipality has admitted to have been struggling to discourage the new trend of unregistered schools run mainly by foreigners from neighbouring countries.

The council is now seeking help from the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL). The commission is conducting hearings into the deaths more than 500 initiates around the country since 2006.

Tshwane’s chief operations officer Nava Pillay told the commission yesterday that the sudden mushrooming of illegal schools run by foreign nationals was an unexpected phenomenon.

He said the unscrupulous operators, who initially arrived in the city to seek work or to do business, opened illegal schools just outside the borders of the city, to escape Tshwane’s stricter by-laws.

This strategy has made it impossible for the metro to enforce the law as it covers a big area and shoulders three provinces namely Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West, said Pillay.

“I don’t think the problem is unique only to Tshwane but we are raising it now because this is a commission that deals with initiation,” Pillay said.

Tshwane health inspector David Muhali said the council was doing all it could to provide initiates with water, medical health and transportation. Thirteen initiates died in the city in the past five years mainly from hydration. –