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.
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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 Organisation (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 theatres 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.
Why not simply use local Mohels and avoid the stigma of an imported device from EY. Most of them need the additional income although they might have some issues about performing brissim along side a local Witch Doctor.
Let them boycott it. And while they’re doing that, boycott everything ever invented by Jews that supported Israel. They’ll quickly sink back into a 3rd world country.
South Africa is a third world country, ever since they ended apartheid the country gets worse and worse – it would be more respectful if they just came out and said it……we know the device saves lives but we hate Jews more then we love our children and therefore we don’t want to buy the lifesaving device
Reminds me of a variation on an old adage: “Bite your nose to spite your face”. Just substitute another body part for “nose”.
great !!
#2 is right on and the message should pertain
to the entire anti- Semitic world.
NO Jew should ever spend money touring this cursed country ,or others who share this philosophy,including Germany,Austria, Poland and Spain where Jewish touring is booming even with a legitimate excuse for Kever Avos !!
I’m having a hard time framing a response.
The first impulse is that COSATU have taken leave of their senses: someone is coming to save childrens’ lives and they’re saying “no, thank you, we’d rather they die.”
Then I think, they truly believe Israel is a human rights violator, and if South Africans die because they can’t have dealings with such villains, the deceased are martyrs to the cause.
How do you convince them that when Israel kills a Palestinian child, they call it a tragedy, and when the Palestinians kill an Israeli child they call it a triumph? Or that when the Israelis level a Palestinian home, it’s an act of self defense, but when the Palestinians level an Israeli home, it’s a victory?
Or to get to the root of the issue: if they think the Palestinians were evicted from their homeland in 1948, they should remember it’s the UN–a WORLD body– that created Israel in the first place, and we’re no less deserving of a homeland than they.
How do you convince them that it’s not the Israelis who are violating human rights?