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Harvest of death feeds occult's macabretrade
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Justice for allByBasildon Peta5:00 AM Saturday Aug 28, 2004FacebookTwitterEmailPrint
By BASILDON PETAThey first hit 10-year-old Sello Chokoe with a blunt instrument, causinga gash on his head. They then chopped off his penis, his hand and hisear. They were harvesting his body parts for "muti", the murderouspractice of traditional African medicine.Yet it is far from a normal part of such medicine. "In my many years of service in the South African police I have not encountered this sadistictaking of a young innocent life," said police inspector Mohlahla Moshaneas he led us to the spot.The murder site is a few kilometres from Sello's village of Moletjie innorthern Limpopo.Sello was lured to a lonely hill on the veld on the pretence of looking fora neighbour's donkeys.After a carefully planned ambush, the killers wedged the boy betweentwo large rocks to perform their macabre ceremony.Sello dragged himself from the rocks where he had been abandoned andwas found by a woman collecting firewood. He died a few days later inhospital.The practice of muti provides a disconcerting counterpoint to thecontemporary image of the new South Africa.Dr Gerard Lubschagne, who heads the police investigativepsychology unit, estimates lives lost to ritual murders at between 50to 300 every year."We don't have accurate figures because most murders here are in ourrecords as murders irrespective of motive," he says. "Most people mightalso not regard a murder as a muti matter but just dismiss it as the workof crazy killers."Dr Lubschagne admits the rate of murders signals a worrying trend inSouth Africa. Despite South Africa being the most developed Africaneconomy, a huge chunk of its population still believes that power andwealth are better stoked by witchdoctors than stockbrokers."People who want to do better, people who want to be promoted at work,gamblers and politicians who want to win, even bank robbers who seekto get away with their criminal acts, turn to muti," Dr Lubschagne says.Body parts are eaten, drunk or smeared over the ambitious person.Various parts are used for different purposes. A man who had difficultyproducing children killed a father of several children and used hisvictim's genitals for muti.In another case, a butcher used a severed hand to slap each of hisproducts every morning before opening as a way of invoking the spiritsto beckon customers.Mathews Mojela, the head teacher at Sello's school, has worked in rural
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areas for nearly a quarter of a century. He says muti is founded in thearchaic belief that there is only a limited amount of good luck around -if you want to increase your wealth or luck then it should come atanother's expense.And the screaming of a child while his body parts are being chopped off is regarded as a sign calling customers to the perpetrator's business. Itis also believed that magical powers are awakened by the screams.Eating or burying the body parts "captures" the desired results.Robert Thornton, an anthropology professor at the University of Witswatersrand in Johannesburg, says children such as Sello are targetedbecause it is believed the power of the virgin is greater than that of asexually active adult.The main motivating idea is what Thornton describes as "symbolic logic"- the idea that another person's penis will strengthen that of theperpetrator, or that the perpetrator's farsightedness will be improved bydevouring the victim's eyes. Blood is thought to increase vitality.Professor Issack Niehaus of the University of Pretoria fears that mutikillings will increase as the inequalities of wealth become moreentrenched. "I would expect the occult economy - that is the belief inusing magical means to gain prosperity - to increase as povertyworsens," Niehaus says.One of the few victims who lived to tell his story is Jeffery Mkhonto. Sixyears ago, he was mutilated by an organised gang out to harvest bodyparts.He had been lured to the house of a neighbour with an offer of food.Then he was castrated.Lubschagne says muti killings are difficult to investigate because thereis no clear relationship between perpetrator and victim.Yet other reports suggest muti victims are often known to theperpetrators and therefore more easily lured - then mutilated and killed.Neighbours are often too afraid to come forward with evidence becauseof fears of a magical retaliation.At Sello's village, even the elders are too afraid to point the fingerdirectly at one neighbour, traditional healer Peter Kagbi, although manyvillagers - in muffled tones - hint that he was implicated in Sello'smurder.Kagbi was thought to have sent Sello to fetch donkeys without Sello'smother's permission. Kagbi, who is in his late 60s, was questioned forfour days by the police before being released pending furtherinvestigations.Kagbi confirmed he had sent Sello to fetch the donkeys but deniedtaking part in the murder. He said he saw nothing wrong in sending Sellowithout permission as he had sent the boy on errands before - a pointhotly disputed by the boy's family.Kagbi said he had been threatened by neighbours and told they plannedto burn him alive because he was a wizard."Some are accusing me of killing Sello but I did not," Kagbi said. "I havenot fled my home despite the threats. If I do, the community will regardthat as an admission of guilt."Even the eventual capture and conviction of Sello's killers would do littlefor his brokenhearted single mother, Salome, 39, who lives with her tworemaining children on the equivalent of $41 a month social welfaregrant."Anything that does not bring back my son is hardly of any importanceto me now," Salome says. "No mother wants to lose a child this way."Her emotional state will not be helped when she learns that Sello's bodyparts were probably sold for no more than $550 each, the price usuallycharged for a child's body parts in the muti industry.- INDEPENDENT
ByBasildon Peta|Email Basildon
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