Confront ritual crimes - expert
2004-08-17 19:30
Johannesburg - The government must tackle muti killings and ritual murders even though some might want this problem to remain hidden, an expert said on Monday.
"In our country we are shy to talk about this.
"We have come to 10 years of democracy and we want the world to see we are managing and we don't want to go public because it shows our bad side," Professor Thias Kgatla, professor of religious studies at the University of the North, said.
Kgatla said a repeat of a successful campaign in 1994 against the practice was needed.
This follows the burial on Sunday of Limpopo schoolboy Sello Chokoe who was found dead in the veld with his hand, genitals and ear hacked off.
Kgatla explained that some people believed that body parts were useful in achieving certain objectives and the more difficult the medicine was to obtain, the more power it held.
"People can get animal parts, but they believe that a human body part, which is more difficult to obtain, holds more power," he said.
They believed that a hand hidden in a newly opened shop could influence people to give money to the shop, a head could make people think about them, and genitals, which represented reproduction, could cause wealth to increase.
They took their leads from others who showed outward signs of success, and on enquiry could be referred to a supposedly helpful diviner.
"They will go to them for answers and the diviner will be guided by their beliefs and will prescribe according to those beliefs," Kgatla said.
He an awareness campaign could not probably not bring forward the people who killed Chokoe, but would prevent future murders.
"This person will do everything not to be discovered - he will be flying for his life."
People who resorted to murders and mutilations were in situations which made them resort to extremes.
"We are dealing with hardened people - murderers, people with AK47s looking for bank vans.
"You can't just rationalise it as a love for money."
Kgatla explained that the beliefs on which ritual activities were based were not beliefs that saw people gathering as groups on certain days.
"It's a belief in the sense of 'if you don't believe, you can't do it'.
"People believe that when they are stretched to the limit, human parts can do wonders. They believe nature has answers.
"The trees have power, there is power in objects like rocks.
"In Modimolle, in Limpopo, some people believe that if you climb up a big rock that is there, you won't come back, God will meet you. It's animism."
"Some people think you can succeed if you just have the right formula. It's crazy but they believe it. They need to know that if there are 10 people living in a village, they are not going to sell 100 loaves of bread."
Calling on the government to become involved in dealing with the problem of ritual killings and injuries, Kgatla said awareness programmes would have to be presented by people with credibility in the community.
Asked if presenting workshops on starting businesses might help, Kgatla said: "If you, a white woman, go there with a workshop on business strategies, some people will be abusive to you, some will walk away, the others will just stare.
"It has to be done by somebody who the community trusts, who has already established their credibility.
A profile of the communities affected by the problem was: mostly rural, not influenced much by Western ways of life, cut off by poverty, not interacting with other communities and not educated.
It could be in bushy areas where people still relate to the forest and believe forest spirits can help them.
The problem tended to be geographically defined and surfaced mainly in Limpopo and northern KwaZulu-Natal, which have links to Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi, where powerful diviners are said to live.
Occasionally it is found in the rural areas of the Eastern Cape.
"It also happens in cities," Kgatla said, "but they do it differently there."
- SAPA