Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Israeli Circumcision Aid Sparks Uproar in South Africa

South Africa may turn to an Israeli circumcision device to reduce the number of young males who die in botched initiation ceremonies, provoking an outcry from union allies of the ruling party who support sanctions against the Jewish state.

Every year, dozens of teenaged South African males die of blood loss or infection in traditional circumcision practices during the initiation ceremonies which are a key rite of passage to manhood, especially among the Xhosa nation.

Department of health spokesman Joe Maila told Reuters that the government was still studying the device, known as PrePex, and had not yet decided whether or not to officially sanction its use and make it widely available.

The powerful Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), a key ally of the ruling African National Congress, said it was opposed to the government doing any business with Israel because of alleged human rights violations.

“We have a problem that the device comes from Israel. We need to boycott everything that comes from that pariah state,” Sizwe Pamla, a spokesman for a public sector union that is part of COSATU, told Reuters.

The non-surgical disposable device PrePex, endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO), has been piloted at several non-profit sites across South Africa but has not yet been introduced in government hospitals.

PrePex, developed by Israel firm Circ MedTech, allows circumcisions to be performed by nurses, which will free up doctors and operating theaters in busy state facilities.

Pamla said if PrePex was introduced in state hospitals, nurses affiliated to COSATU will refuse to perform circumcisions using the device.

South Africa has encouraged medical circumcisions over the less safe traditional practices and believes it could also help in the fight against HIV/Aids, which has infected at least 12 percent of the population.

According to the WHO, male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquiring HIV in men by about 60 percent.

PrePex is being used in a number of African countries including Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.