Harvest of death feeds occult's macabre trade

28.08.2004
By BASILDON PETA
They first hit 10-year-old Sello Chokoe with a blunt instrument, causing a gash on his head. They then chopped off his penis, his hand and his ear. They were harvesting his body parts for "muti", the murderous practice 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 sadistic taking of a young innocent life," said police inspector Mohlahla Moshane as he led us to the spot.

The murder site is a few kilometres from Sello's village of Moletjie in northern Limpopo.

Sello was lured to a lonely hill on the veld on the pretence of looking for a neighbour's donkeys.

After a carefully planned ambush, the killers wedged the boy between two large rocks to perform their macabre ceremony.

Sello dragged himself from the rocks where he had been abandoned and was found by a woman collecting firewood. He died a few days later in hospital.

The practice of muti provides a disconcerting counterpoint to the contemporary image of the new South Africa.

Dr Gerard Lubschagne, who heads the police investigative psychology unit, estimates lives lost to ritual murders at between 50 to 300 every year.

"We don't have accurate figures because most murders here are in our records as murders irrespective of motive," he says. "Most people might also not regard a murder as a muti matter but just dismiss it as the work of crazy killers."

Dr Lubschagne admits the rate of murders signals a worrying trend in South Africa. Despite South Africa being the most developed African economy, a huge chunk of its population still believes that power and wealth 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 seek to 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 difficulty producing children killed a father of several children and used his victim's genitals for muti.

In another case, a butcher used a severed hand to slap each of his products every morning before opening as a way of invoking the spirits to beckon customers.

Mathews Mojela, the head teacher at Sello's school, has worked in rural areas for nearly a quarter of a century. He says muti is founded in the archaic 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 at another'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. It is 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 targeted because it is believed the power of the virgin is greater than that of a sexually active adult.

The main motivating idea is what Thornton describes as "symbolic logic" - the idea that another person's penis will strengthen that of the perpetrator, or that the perpetrator's farsightedness will be improved by devouring the victim's eyes. Blood is thought to increase vitality.

Professor Issack Niehaus of the University of Pretoria fears that muti killings will increase as the inequalities of wealth become more entrenched. "I would expect the occult economy - that is the belief in using magical means to gain prosperity - to increase as poverty worsens," Niehaus says.

One of the few victims who lived to tell his story is Jeffery Mkhonto. Six years ago, he was mutilated by an organised gang out to harvest body parts.

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 there is no clear relationship between perpetrator and victim.

Yet other reports suggest muti victims are often known to the perpetrators and therefore more easily lured - then mutilated and killed.

Neighbours are often too afraid to come forward with evidence because of fears of a magical retaliation.

At Sello's village, even the elders are too afraid to point the finger directly at one neighbour, traditional healer Peter Kagbi, although many villagers - in muffled tones - hint that he was implicated in Sello's murder.

Kagbi was thought to have sent Sello to fetch donkeys without Sello's mother's permission. Kagbi, who is in his late 60s, was questioned for four days by the police before being released pending further investigations.

Kagbi confirmed he had sent Sello to fetch the donkeys but denied taking part in the murder. He said he saw nothing wrong in sending Sello without permission as he had sent the boy on errands before - a point hotly disputed by the boy's family.

Kagbi said he had been threatened by neighbours and told they planned to burn him alive because he was a wizard.

"Some are accusing me of killing Sello but I did not," Kagbi said. "I have not fled my home despite the threats. If I do, the community will regard that as an admission of guilt."

Even the eventual capture and conviction of Sello's killers would do little for his brokenhearted single mother, Salome, 39, who lives with her two remaining children on the equivalent of $41 a month social welfare grant.

"Anything that does not bring back my son is hardly of any importance to 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 body parts were probably sold for no more than $550 each, the price usually charged for a child's body parts in the muti industry.

Kathi,
Horrible story! When I was in Zim last month, our appy PH was out checking pans for ele tracks not too far from the Moz border. He found the carcasses of two poached elephants about a month old with the tusks chopped out and most of the meat butchered and most probably sold to the bush meat trade. However, what was really weird was the fifty headless vultures, eagles and one Maribou stork that were scattered about. It appears our butcher boys were after more than just n'yama and ivory! The heads of vultures are powerful muti! It seems, according to one of the PH's in camp, that if you eat a vultures head, including the brain...you will never go hungry because vultures ride the wind currents and see all the carcasses and, at least to the bush African, never starve. Ryan drove in to Mushimbi Pools the closest town to report it but...... Anyway, an interesting story on Muti I happened on in the Zambezi Valley.

And God created AIDS to punish the evil.

You dont understand, Nitrox. In the U.S. it would be explained as - "It's a black thing and you whiteys can't relate".

Dungbeetle

Doesn�t voodoo also have quite a few aspects that directly relate to muti? And it has quite a following in the US? Whites and blacks?

We�ve had satanists perform ritual killings here in Finland, the rituals including acts of cannibalism etc.

So it ain�t just Africa...

There was at least one child killed like this a couple of years back in London and the dismembered torso was recovered from the River Thames. The problem is serious enough and wide spread enough for Scotland Yard to have a team of Detectives which specialise in ritual/muti killings.



Just recently there was a black woman found dismembered in Ireland and there is a strong suspicion of a muit connection to that to....



I remember reading an article about the original murder of the child in London, and one of the frightening things was that people the police believe were involved were not uneducated blacks "straight off the boat" from Africa, but but otherwise respectable educated African businessmen, teachers & politians ect who had been in the UK quite a while in some cases.



People who do this sort of thing should die in the same manner as their victems and we should revieve the anchient custom of putting the boddies in gibbets along the River Thames!



Regards,



Pete

That was a horrible story. I can't imagine what that boy went through. I agree that the best punishment is to do the exact same thing to the perpetrators.

Last June some of the staff that I was hunting with found a black wildebeest that had a nostril, it's rectum, scrotum and testis, lower lip, and an eye removed.

The folks thought it was witchcraft.

The gnu had been crippled and lost by a previous client (not Riaan's client).

Amazing...

-Steve

CEWE:Vodoo is only praticed along with "santeria" by Blacks, mostly Haitians and other Caribbean immigrants only. Sure, there might be a few "thrill seekers" among whites that do it, like maybe in your country, but I'm sure it's not pervasive here or in Finland. When I was hunting in Zimbabwe, one morning I heard "no-shit" african drums like in Tarzan movies. That is exactly what they were; drums used to communicate. Half a million years ago, I guess we all started the same way. Those are just the facts. jorge

jorge: Yes you are right, Africa still lives with a lot of it�s old beliefs but when you get down to the basics their is plenty meaningless and ritualistic and sadistic murder to go around for everyone. Is the difference between a pedofilic serial killer and muti anything that needs discussing? Both are horrid, both exist. Just don�t get up on high horses and pretend that the Western world is some peaceful utopia full of brotherly love and saints in the waiting.



It just isn�t so and if you�d open your eyes you�d see that the boogeyman lives in everybodies backyard!



Grow up man!

bwanamrm,
As we were traveling down a dry riverbed in Omay,Zimbabwe last August/September we spotted a dead vulture. One of the trackers jumped off the truck,ran over to the dead vulture and cut the head off. The tracker then put the head in his pocket. According to our PH the belief is that vultures can find dead animals and their spirit will help the trackers to find game (either alive or dead).

I fully realize the horrors of the modern world. I mean we had to go over there and clean up the Nazis and communists, but we have phones for communications and antibiotics for medicines. AND we even have to manage thier wildlife. jorge

jorge: That is so stupid it just proves my point.