SOUTH AFRICA: Youth kills himself after removal of his penis

Dispatch Live (South Africa)
March 25, 2016

Stricken teen ends his life after penile amputation due to circumcision complication

by Lulamile Feni
Instead of celebrating his grandson’s passage to manhood, a grieving archbishop now has to bury him.

Next Monday, Zion Methodist Church’s Archbishop Sipho Dlanaye will lay 16-year-old Minentle to rest at Ntsonyini village in Ngqeleni.

Minentle was found hanging by a rope at his grandfather’s house in Mchoncho village in Ngqeleni last Wednesday after a 10-month battle with a circumcision complication that saw him having a penile amputation.

The teenager had lived with his grandparents because his parents work in Johannesburg.

Dlanaye, who is also a police lieutenant, and his wife Noluthando Dlanaye spent months trying to counsel the stricken teen.

At an initiation school in May last year Minentle was ill-treated, assaulted with sticks and burnt on his buttocks.

He was treated in hospitals in Mthatha and Libode for complications following the circumcision.

“He could not take it any more. It was too heavy for him to deal with it and he could not see a future as a man after he had a penile amputation following the illegal circumcision that went horribly wrong,” said Dlanaye.

...Noluthando told the Daily Dispatch her grandson had shown no sign of suicidal tendencies during their weekly visits to him in hospital.

It was only last Monday that they realised he was looking drained and feeling frustrated.

“He denied that there was something worrying him. But two days later Minentle committed suicide,” said the grandmother.

She said she spoke to him on the phone an hour before he took his life and “he sounded happy”.
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