- 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.
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- 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.
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- The murder site is a few kilometres away from Sello's
village, Moletjie, in northern Limpopo province. There stands a distinct
and lonely hill in a vast grass and shrub veld.
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- The unsuspecting Sello was lured to the spot after being
asked to look for a neighbour's donkeys. After a carefully planned ambush,
his killers wedged him between the two large rocks to performed their macabre
ceremony.
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- Sello seems to have dragged himself from the rocks where
he had been abandoned. A woman collecting firewood found him and he was
taken to hospital, but died a few days later. He was buried last Sunday
in his fear-wracked village.
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- The practice of muti provides a disconcerting counterpoint
to the contemporary image of the new South Africa. Dr Gerard Lubschagne,
who heads the investigative psychology unit of the South African police
service, conservatively estimates lives lost to ritual murders at between
50 to 300 every year. "We don't have accurate figures because most
murders here are recorded 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 some crazy killers."
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- Dr Lubschagne admits the rate of murders signals a very
worrying trend in South Africa. Despite South Africa being the most developed
African economy, a huge chunk of its population still believes power and
wealth are better stoked by witch-doctors than stockbrokers and market
analysts. "People who want to do better, people who want to be promoted
at work, gamblers and politicians who want to win and even bank robbers
who seek to get away with their criminal acts turn to muti," Dr Lubschagne
said.
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- How the body parts are used varies with what customers
want to achieve. They are eaten, drunk or smeared over the ambitious person.
Various parts are used for different purposes. A man who had difficulty
in producing children killed a father of several children and used his
victim's genitals for muti. In another case, a butcher used a severed human
hand to slap each of his products every morning before opening as a way
of invoking the spirits to beckon customers.
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- Mathews Mojela is the head teacher at Sello's primary
school. He has worked in rural areas for nearly a quarter of a century
and says muti is founded in the archaic belief that there is only a limited
amount of good luck around. If one wants to increase his wealth or luck,
then it should come at another's expense.
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- The screaming of a child while his body parts are being
chopped off is also regarded as a sign calling customers to the perpetrator's
business, Mr Mojolela said. It is also believed that magical powers are
awakened by the screams. Eating or burying the body parts "capture"
the desired results. Robert Thornton, an anthropology professor at the
University of Witswatersrand in Johannesburg , who has done research in
traditional healing, says children like Sello are targeted because it is
believed that the power of the virgin is greater than that of a sexually
active adult.
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- The main motivating idea is what Professor Thorntorn
describes as "symbolic logic", the idea that another person's
penis will strengthen the perpetrator's, or that the perpetrator's far-sightedness
will be improved by devouring the victim's eyes. Blood is thought to increase
vitality.
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- Professor Issack Niehaus of the University of Pretoria
fears that muti killings will increase as the inequalities of wealth become
more entrenched. He said: "I would expect the occult economy - that
is the belief in using magical means to gain prosperity - to increase as
poverty worsens."
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- At the spot where Sello was murdered, Inspector Mashane
said "A young kid is carefully lured into this bush and mutilated
without any witnesses. If he survives, perhaps he is the only person who
could help identify his killers."
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- One of the few victims who lived to tell his story was
Jeffery Mkhonto, who six years ago was mutilated by an organised gang set
to harvest body parts. He had been lured to the house of a neighbour for
food and ended up being castrated.
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- Dr Lubschagne says muti killings are difficult to investigate
because there is no clear relationship between perpetrator and victim.
Yet other reports have also suggested that the muti victim is often known
to the perpetrators and is easily lured and murdered in the process. Communities
themselves are often too afraid to come forward with evidence because of
fears of a magical retaliation.
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- At Sello's homestead, even the elders were too afraid
to point any fingers directly at a neighbour, a traditional healer, although
many villagers implicated him in Sello's murder in muffled tones. The neighbour
had allegedly sent Sello to fetch his donkeys without Sello's mother's
permission. Peter Kagbi, who is in his late sixties, was questioned for
four days by the police over Sello's murder before being released pending
further investigations. Mr Kgabi confirmed that he had sent Sello to fetch
the donkeys, but he denied taking part in the murder.
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- He said he saw nothing wrong in sending Sello without
the mother's permission as he had done that on similar errands before,
a point hotly disputed by the boy's family. Mr Kgabi said he had been threatened
by the community and told they planned to burn him alive because he was
a wizard.
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- "Some are accusing me of killing Sello but I did
not," he said. "I have not fled my home despite the threats because
if I do, the community will regard that as an admission of guilt."
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- 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 a £15 a month social grant from
the government.
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- "Anything that does not bring back my son is hardly
of any importance to me now. No mother wants to lose a child this way,"
she said.
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- Her emotional state will not be helped when she learns
that Sello's body parts probably were sold for no more than £200
each, the price normally charged for a child's body parts in the muti industry.
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=553679
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