Research indicates that initiation practices are being sustained (Mtumane, 2004 cited in Ntombana, 2011b), and that their value in conferring "ancestral masculinity" (Ncaca, 2014) has perhaps strengthened where other sources of male identity have reduced in importance. In South Africa the boy's father or the chief chooses the surgeon who will perform the circumcision and amongst the Chewa in Malawi fathers decide when a boy should join the Gule cult (the secret male-only cult through which initiation occurs). The implication of their peripheral role is that the transition to adulthood primarily concerns the young person's identity within the wider community in ways that de-emphasise intimate parent-child bonds centred around shared domestic space.