South African Court Rules Forced Circumcision of Teenager Is Unconstitutional

South Africa's Weekend Post reported yesterday on a decision by a High Court Judge in the town of Bhisho in South Africa's Eastern Cape Province. Teenager Bonani Yamani, now a second-year university student, sued his father and ten other men for abducting him and forcibly performing a traditional Xhosa circumcision on him in 2007 just three months after he had already been circumcised in a hospital. Bonani argued that the traditional circumcision violated his religious beliefs. The court ruled that the forced circumcision violated Bonani's constitutional rights. The teenager had also named the Eastern Cape Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa as a defendant. However he withdrew his complaint after the current head of the group apologized for comments made by his predecessor urging that people who refused traditional circumcision should be ostracised.