Ignorance In Africa
By Cathryn Crawford (10/07/03)
The reports this week of 3-year-old Thabang Malakoane in Eatonside, South Africa, are sickening. Thabang disappeared while his mother was napping and was later found with his left hand, genitals, brain, heart, and other vital organs gone. The small boy fell victim to a lucrative black market that has been built around the sale of human - especially children - body parts and organs.
The black market is grounded in muti medicine, the traditional African system of holistic healthcare. One of the beliefs of muti is that certain body parts can enhance your luck or health. Children are especially targeted because they are young - therefore, in the beliefs of muti, they have used up very little of their good luck.
The killing of Thabang is not an isolated case. Muti last came into the news with the case of “Adam”, a young South African boy discovered floating in the Thames last year with his throat slit and his limbs missing. After the discovery of Adam, police commanders from France, Greece, Italy, and the United States held a first ever conference to discuss the widespread problem of muti murders. Commander Andy Baker of Scotland Yard, who investigated the Thames killing, said at that time that there were striking similarities between several murders in Italy and the mutilation and dismemberment involved in the Thames killing. He also said that the figure was expected to rise from the double figures to the hundreds over the next few years, as police throughout Europe learned to recognize the characteristics of a muti murder.
South Africa, which is said to be one of the most developed societies in Africa, has a frighteningly high rate of muti slayings. Gerard Labuschagne, of the South African Police Service, estimates the average to be anywhere from one a month to 300 a year. The killings aren’t impulsive in nature - rather, they are commissioned specifically for a customer and carried out by witch doctors, called sangomas. Human skulls are used to bring good luck to businesses, hands are buried under entrances to stores to bring customers, genitals and placentas are used to cure infertility. Body parts - including internal organs - are often taken while the victims are alive so that the screams will make the parts more potent.
Dr Anthony Minnar, of the Institute for Human Rights and Criminal Justice in South Africa, said this regarding muti murders in South Africa - "We have children going missing every week from our townships. The assumption is that those missing children are being put into prostitution and also that they are being used for muti murder."
Muti has been a prominent factor in the spread of HIV throughout Africa. One of its teachings says that if an HIV positive man has sex with a virgin - the younger the better - he will be cured, and the following of that precept has led to thousands of babies born with the disease. This specific practice isn’t only followed in South Africa - where muti is most common - but throughout the entire continent of Africa.
There appears to be no end in sight to the mutilation and murder. In South Africa, the government has set up a Commission of Inquiry into Witchcraft Violence and Ritual Murders, but its effectiveness has been limited because the local police often refuse to investigate such murders, and witnesses will not come forward.
Very little is ever heard in the Western media about muti slayings, despite the fact that they are becoming more and more common. While the stories about Thabang and Adam are shocking, the memory quickly fades from the public consciousness. However, this out of sight, out of mind approach is only going to compound the problem. As we ignore the problem, it grows, and as it grows, the likelihood of it eventually causing the West problems grows. We are very good at contributing money to surface problems – for example, the fifteen billion dollars that President Bush recently set aside for Africa regarding the AIDS crisis. However, there has to be a fundamental change in the people themselves for this to stop, and that can only be solved when we commit to the only thing that will help this problem – education. We can cure the symptoms of these bloody practices forever, but there will never be an end until we crack the surface and go under. The West has to stop ignoring the foundational crisis of uneducated people, raising uneducated kids. It’s an endless circle that has no chance of ending unless we intervene.
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