Swaziland has been preparing its men for mass circumcision since 2006. The previous year, a randomized controlled trial in South Africa (later confirmed by studies in Uganda and Kenya) found that circumcised men are as much as 60 percent less likely to contract HIV through heterosexual sex. Scientists do not yet know exactly why, but the study was so convincing that it was stopped after 18 months, because preventing the uncircumcised control group from getting the procedure would have been unethical.

Now a nationwide campaign is under way to circumcise 160,000 HIV-­negative males by the end of this year. That’s the number organizers believe will walk willingly into the operating theater. The government’s task force plans to recruit additional doctors from around the world, train them, and send them throughout the country to perform the surgeries. At the campaign’s peak, the organizers expect to have 35 doctors and 245 nurses. “This will prove to Africa that together we can fight HIV,” says Ayanda Nqeketo, of the ministry of health. “It will be a historic moment.”

To encourage men to have the surgery, outreach teams are traveling to all areas of Swaziland. When I visited the small city of Nhlangano on a hot August day, four agents were pulling aside men and boys in the town center. “Hey, brother, are you circumcised?” they asked. “No? Why not?” A DJ played loud dance music. Every 10 minutes he got on the mike and said, “Circumcision reduces the risk of HIV and other STIs. It’s easy and not painful. Go to the tent and register.”

Many Swazi men want to get circumcised, “but most of them for the wrong reason,” says Bheki Vilane, the national director of Marie Stopes Swazi­land, a non-governmental organization performing circumcisions. He’s voicing the main concern about circumcision as an HIV-prevention strategy: will it make Swazi men even more sexually reckless than they are already? “Some of the men have the misconception that they’ll be 100 percent safe.” To dispel this myth, NGOs are ensuring that every patient goes through counseling before and after the procedure. Each man is told to use condoms, and also given the option to be tested for HIV, which about 85 percent agree to do.

“How’s it going?” asks Dr. Ronald Wandira, once Banele’s anesthetic has kicked in. Wandira, who works for an NGO called Population Services International, will perform the surgery.

Banele is so nervous it hurts to watch him. “Like I am on my way to heaven,” he says, his hands covering his eyes.

It also hurts to watch the procedure. Banele is getting the forceps-guided method. The task force has chosen this as the preferred technique for the campaign (over “sleeve” and “dorsal slit”) because it is thought to require the least amount of surgical skill while still producing good results. Wandira pulls Banele’s foreskin up over the glans of the penis and squeezes it with the forceps. The foreskin is stretched taut so that the doctor can remove the targeted tissue.