Deaths linked to witchcraft

2006-01-05 19:48

Cape Town - Two women, one of them a grandmother, were shot dead and a man wounded in the Mqanduli area of Transkei on Wednesday night in what is believed to be a witchcraft-related killing.

The shootings follow the death last month of two boys who attended circumcision school and two attendants struck by lightning at a circumcision school at Gengqe village in the area.

Nkosinathi Kuluta, Speaker of the King Sabata Dalindyebo district municipality who lives nearby, said he received an urgent call on Wednesday night saying there had been a murder.

He hurried to a homestead and found Bonakele Phokoshe, about 35, with bullet wounds to the leg and stomach, and his mother, Nobangile Phokoshe, 56, and grandmother, Nophuthumile Sigupu, 79, shot dead.

Shot his mother in front of him

Three "young boys" had entered the house between 19:30 and 20:00, according to Phokoshe.

"They tried to push him out of the hut," Kuluta said. "They said get out of the house, we don't want you. He refused, because he wanted to know what was happening, and they started shooting his mother in front of him, and his grandmother.

"They shot them both dead. Then they panicked: they thought he was going to raise the alarm. They shot him in the leg and once in the stomach."

Kuluta said it did not appear that the youths were trying to kill Phokoshe, who did not recognise them even though they were not masked.

He said he and helpers rushed Phokoshe to a nearby clinic, from where he was taken by ambulance to Mthatha General Hospital.

Kuluta said there was speculation in the area that the killings had something to do with witchcraft in the wake of last month's lightning deaths.

"After that there was a lot of rumour in the location here that they [the lightning victims] were bewitched," he said.

"The Phokoshes are one of the families that lost someone in the incident. We strongly believe that it is linked to that."

He condemned the shootings as a "barbaric act".

"This is unacceptable during this era of civilisation, because revenge will led to another revenge, it can lead to some kind of civil war."

He said people should instead accept incidents like the lightning strike as an act of God.

Police are investigating

He said that at the youths' funeral Eastern Cape health MEC Monwabisi Goqwana had urged people not to start pointing fingers over their deaths.

"He knew that in a remote, rural, illiterate area like this one, people will automatically say people are bewitched," Kuluta said.

The lightning victims were Sbusiso Khunyalele, Fezile Kwelihashe, Xolisa Phokoshe - a cousin of the shot Bonakele - and Phila Fuzile.

It was the third fatal lighting strike at an initiation school in the Transkei region in three years.

Mthatha police spokesperson Captain Sherine Reddy confirmed the deaths of the two women. No arrests had been made and a case of murder was being investigated.

"It is suspected that this incident is related to witchcraft," she said.

- SAPA