By TEE NGUGI

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The Daily Nation of January 9 reported that 16 boys were in hospital to get treatment for severe bacterial infection resulting from traditional circumcision.

A few days later, the same paper carried a story about a traditional ritual that recently circumcised boys are forced to undergo in some counties. The initiates, the report said, are forced to have sexual intercourse with women as a cleansing ritual. So the services of sex workers are sought.

In past years, traditional circumcision has led to maiming or death of boys. There is nothing wrong with male circumcision as opposed to the female version. But can’t it be done in accordance with the best health practices and under the supervision of medical doctors?

In the 21st century, we still cling on to traditions that are not only harmful and deadly, but add nothing to our moral or intellectual character.

This debate raises a crucial question: What is the place of traditional culture in a rapidly modernising world? There is a growing disturbing notion that Africans can only be truly themselves by reclaiming and practising their ageold traditions.Thus, in areas where FGM had died out, it is being secretly revived, even as other regions work hard to eliminate the harmful and deadly practice. In other places, the argument is made that the community is losing its moral way because of “too much women’s rights.” The solution? Subjugation of women in accordance with traditional customs.

In my column last week, I debated how those who fear change recreate myths about an idyllic past. They go to ridiculous, sometimes dangerous, lengths to bring back this utopian past. But the past was never a time of democracy, egalitarianism, justice or gender equality. Societies were stratified, patriarchal, despotic, exploitative and discriminative.

In the book , The Myth of African Democracy, Afrifa Gitonga argues that no society can be naturally democratic, and that democracy is struggled for and deliberately safeguarded. So a past shangri-la is just a myth.

Traditional culture is only useful to the extent that it aids in the struggle for dignity and justice for all. In cases where it reverses democratic gains, puts people at health risk, discriminates in terms of gender or clan, then it is no longer useful.

Those who propagate the idea of tradition as being moral, desirable or authentic make a fundamental error. No society on earth is the way it was. All have had to reinvent themselves to survive.

Many advocates of traditionalism would be shocked to learn that the traditions they hold dear and think of as constituting an “eternal irreducible essence” of their tribe or race were not in existence some decades or centuries ago. They would be further shocked to learn that some of these customs that they think give their tribe or race a moral or intellectual edge over others were in fact borrowed from other communities.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator.