The role that must be played by traditional leaders to ensure safe and legal initiations.

Traditional leaders play a huge role in our diverse societies. They act as custodians of culture and traditions of our society. They are the first point of contact whenever government interact with the people. Through them government has been able to strengthen its reach to people and have been better place to understand the needs of each community through the information provided by traditional leaders.

South African is still relatively a young democracy compared to other nations. As a result while some parts of our society have moved with time. Some sections of our society remain sceptical of modern democracy. They see the modern world as a threat to the customs and traditions that have for many years defined who we are as African people. It is from these fears and uncertainties that a challenge emerges that endangers the ability of government to ensure safe and legal practice of cultural customs which are protected by our constitution.

Throughout the custom of initiation pre-and post-apartheid traditional leaders were entrusted with the custom and they managed it well that is why is has been sustained to date. However, like in any practice there are always opportunist. These opportunist often misrepresent the custom and sometimes even the statue of traditional leaders in our society and tarnish their name.

At times, there has been lack of collaboration and understanding of roles between government and traditional leaders resulting into frustrations and non-cooperations between the two important players. Traditional leaders sometimes feel undermined by government and virce-versa

• Improving the work of local government council and war rooms to respond to challenges of illegal initiation schools.

Traditional leaders are in their own right traditional  government. They are equally responsible for the people they customarily govern, thus at local sphere of government they must be involved in all matters involving the people especially in the custom of initiation. Councils and war rooms must be inclusive of traditional leaders to make sure that they are the eye of government and the eye of the people they represent. Moreover, they must make sure that they assure members of the community that the legal initiation is in line with their customs and the constitution of the republic of South Africa.

Traditional Leaders must not be observers but active players in the custom of initiation. Awareness campaign must involve traditional leaders as Ambassadors of legal Customary initiation.

Traditional leaders must be empowered with information and their must empower government with information on illegal initiation schools.

Traditional Leaders ought use their structures in communities to ensure better collaboration between government and communities.

• Monitoring and evaluation practices needed to eliminate deaths and mutilation.

Traditional leaders to play a role of monitoring and evaluation just as government does on customary initiation to improve the health and legality of the custom to eliminate deaths and mutilations of young boys.