In the Eastern Cape province, the ethnic Xhosa boys graduate to manhood through a sacrosanct ritual of circumcision.

But every year, the custom among the country’s second-largest ethnic group sees young initiates die of complications from botched circumcisions by ill-trained traditional surgeons.

Boys still flock to traditional initiation schools in the bush, because the faster and less painful medical method can result in a lifetime of rejection.

“When you are uncircumcised regardless of your age, society will never regard you as a man, you will always be a boy. No one wants to live with that,” said Athenkosi Mtirara, who is about to undergo the procedure.

Mtirara says he wanted to follow in the footsteps of all the men in his family who have been through the ritual.

“In my family no one has ever died from a circumcision gone wrong. My older brother has counselled me about things to avoid in order to have a smooth operation,” said the 18-year-old.

Bobby Godsell, the chairman of Eskom, which generates 95 per cent of electricity in sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest economy, resigned this week after being accused of trying to force out his black chief executive.

The power struggle comes as experts warn that South Africa faces another season of blackouts that have prompted national emergencies in the past two years. It also highlights the crisis of leadership in Jacob Zuma’s new government, which is being accused of appeasing “racial populists” as it seeks to contain strongly divergent voices within the ruling ANC party.

At a meeting in Johannesburg, South African Health Minister Dr. Aaron Motsoaledi listened attentively as The Lancet experts detailed the findings of an issue released Tuesday devoted to his country.

His willingness to engage with scientists — contrasting with a predecessor’s insistence that AIDS should be treated with beets and garlic — was hailed as an important step forward.

Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga on Wednesday told Parliament that only 20 million bags of maize, Kenya’s staple food, would be harvested this year, against an annual consumption of 33 million bags.

It is early morning. Across the De Doorns township, an hour’s drive east of the commercial heart of Cape Town, migrant labourers emerge from twisted tin shacks, forced awake by the sound of mourning drifting across the main highway north to Johannesburg.

By the roadside cemetery a dozen women sing and shiver in the midwinter chill beneath a circling flock of starlings: “We will meet again in Heaven, through the blood of Jesus, we will meet.”

The veteran leader took over as chairman of the continent’s largest trade bloc — home to 400 million people stretching from the southern Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean — and opened the customs union within their borders.

“Our message to investors worldwide and to those of our region is clear: we have a regional market for you, come to COMESA,” said the 85-year-old Zimbabwe president, referring to the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa.

“To the whole world, we want to say... that we are serious as a region.”

With a combined gross domestic product of 360 billion dollars (255 billion euros), COMESA’s members range from oil or tourist hotspots to some of the world’s poorest and most conflict-torn nations.

Demonstrators also were threatening to set fire to an oil pumping station of state-owned Petroperu unless the government told police to halt efforts to clear weeks of blockades of roads and rivers that have hurt food and fuel supplies.

Tribes, worried they will lose control over natural resources, have protested since April to force Congress to repeal new laws that encourage foreign mining and energy companies to invest billions of dollars in the mostly pristine rainforest.

Violence broke out on Friday as police tried to disperse a roadblock on a stretch of highway called “Devil’s Curve” in the Bagua region of Amazonas province, about 870 miles (1,400 km) north of Lima, the capital.

“We need to understand the rules of the game. What we are saying is that we have existing contracts which are prevailing now for many years — production sharing, formal concessions and they have a tax regime which is very complex,” Total chief executive Christophe de Margerie said.

“We need to clarify, to be transparent, it needs to be acceptable..,” de Margerie told reporters on the sideline of an event to mark the inauguration of Akpo, the French company’s flagship deep offshore oil and gas field in Nigeria.

“We need to know how we go from something which exists to a new one. What is your assets today? What will be your assets tomorrow and thereafter?” de Margerie said, adding “we support, in principle, this reform.”