By Baldwin Ndaba
He managed to survive Heidelberg's "hill of death" once, but Papa Mbovane, 19, did not make it the second time.
He died of excessive internal bleeding at Heidelberg Hospital on Monday, after vomiting up blood and pieces of flesh.
Mbovane, of Ratanda, is the sixth teenager to die after attending initiation bush camps at Nooitgedacht farm outside Heidelberg.
'Mbovane is the sixth teenager to die' It is not known if his fatal injuries were the result of his first or second stay at the camp.
Mbovane was rescued from the camps last Tuesday, along with 50 others. He and others had been beaten by their initiation school teachers for failing to sing properly.
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However, Papa, his brother Abednego Mbovane and his stepbrother Paki Dlamini were returned to the initiation camp on Wednesday, the day after they were discharged from hospital.
His sister Paulina Mbovane, 38, said the family were told by the inyanga who performed the circumcision that if the boys did not complete the ritual, they would go mad.
"We did not want our brothers to suffer this fate," she said. "But on Saturday the inyanga sent word that our child was sick in the bushes.
Unsuitable due to the lack of sanitation and water "We then organised a car to fetch Papa. We brought him home on Saturday. But he was unable to sleep that night and complained that he was seeing visions of a man and a woman trying to shove a hot stick into his anus," Paulina said.
"He was vomiting blood and pieces of flesh. We took him to hospital on Sunday."
When Paulina, accompanied by her cousin Sophie Mofokeng and Papa's girlfriend Thobeka Maqungu, went to the hospital to visit him on Monday afternoon, they were shocked when they pulled back his bed sheet to find him dead.
Sobbing hysterically, the women said: "He would be alive if he had not gone back to the initiation school".
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