← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · yummybear
Thread ID: 10094 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2003-09-28
2003-09-28 22:31 | User Profile
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/international/africa/28AFRI.html?ex=1065326400&en=80508d9764abd22e&ei=5062&partner=GOOGL[/url]
[B]Toddler's Killing Exposes Ghoulish South Africa Practice[/B] By SHARON LaFRANIERE
ATONSIDE, South Africa, Sept. 22 ââ¬â Neighbors here say they have never seen anyone emerge from the healer's shack, a tin-walled affair crowned with a cross atop a metal rod, proclaiming to have been cured. Still, the word in this treeless squatters' camp of trash-strewn yards and chicken-wire fences south of Johannesburg was that his medicine was good.
That was until three weeks ago, when 3-year-old Thabang Malakoane disappeared as his mother napped in their own shack next door. When his body was found, in a garbage bag under a thin layer of dirt, the left hand and genitals had been severed. The brain, heart and other vital organs were gone.
What remains is the rage of neighbors convinced that the healer and another man carried out an unspeakable crime, and the deep-rooted superstitions that the police suspect prevent witnesses from talking.
People in this dense camp openly accuse the healer and a second man of an ancient and gruesome practice: murder so that human body parts can be taken for what is known as muti ââ¬â the term is derived from the Zulu word for medicine.
"If they come back here, the community is going to kill them," said Gladys Mbanzi, 34, who lives one dirt road away and is the mother of two boys. "If they disappear, we will burn down their shacks. The community has found them guilty."
The police have taken the two men into custody, partly for their own safety. Yet after weeks of inquiry, Detective Isaac Nketle says he is stymied. "People just don't want to come forward," he said.
In Africa's richest and most developed society, there may be no more bare and more sensitive divide between past and present than this. Muti murders, especially of children, remain disturbingly common; South Africa's police investigate an average of about one a month, said Gerald Labuschagne, who heads a police investigative psychology unit.
Thabang's is the third suspected case in three weeks. Six men were arrested in Free State Province on Sept. 9 for trying to sell a human head, a pair of hands and feet, a heart, genitals and intestines. On Sept. 20, picnickers found the head of a 5-year-old floating by a dam near Johannesburg.
Most South Africans are revolted by muti killings, and the police say they diligently pursue each case. But reaction to such cases sometimes seems muted, possibly because of the frequency of the crime, and of killings in general in a nation that records about 22,000 murders a year.
Another reason, experts say, may be that muti killings illuminate an aspect of an ancient culture that modern South Africans would prefer to leave unexamined. "It tends to get swept under the carpet," said Anthony Minnaar, a senior researcher with Johannesburg's Institute of Human Rights and Criminal Justice Studies. "It points to a belief in witchcraft and spirit worship ââ¬â things people don't want to acknowledge."
South Africa's medical system boasts modern hospitals and pharmacies, but it coexists with bone-throwing healers whose prescriptions sometimes include the most grisly of curatives. Faith in them is more widespread than this nation's modern veneer suggests, some say.
The killings follow a pattern. A client approaches a healer, who orders a third person to collect body parts. A hand in a shop's doorway supposedly attracts customers; genitals allegedly enhance virility or fertility; fat from a stomach is prescribed to ensure a good harvest. Lore says parts severed from live victims are most potent because their screams awaken supernatural powers. Parts from children are considered especially strong.
The South African police say that most muti killings occur in rural areas, where tribal structures and superstition are strongest. But urban areas are not exempt.
Last year, a man was arrested in Krugersdorp, just west of Johannesburg, after offering to sell a human head for about $1,300. Also last year, a journalist posing as a buyer at a traditional medicine market under an elevated highway in Johannesburg was offered a human brain, an eye and kneecaps for about $230, according to a news report.
Mr. Labuschagne, the police psychologist, said even some Westernized members of the country's political class believed that human parts had medicinal properties.
"I don't think these beliefs are limited to a certain class of people or even a certain level of education," he said. To some who believe that the supernatural can determine one's success and that plant- or animal-based mixtures ward off evil, human muti is "just pushing the envelope a little further," he said.
The government sought in 1995 to combat muti killings by investigating witchcraft-related violence. The report urged government regulation of traditional healers and an education campaign to "liberate people mentally." But an official with the province's Security Ministry said the campaign never got going. Parliament has yet to enact legislation regulating traditional healers.
Takalane Mathiba, who heads a private association that has registered 80,000 traditional healers, said that while his group tried to help the police, it could not control the fly-by-night operators who trade in human organs and bones.
Some police officials see one bright spot: public outrage is gradually replacing fear of the healers' supposed powers. In the Free State case, the arraignment of the six suspects drew 200 protesters demanding their execution.
Thabang Malakoane's neighbors flocked one recent afternoon to his mother's shack, 13 square feet plus an outhouse, vowing to carry out vengeance should the police fail. But witnesses have yet to step forward with any solid leads.
Like most squatters, Thabang's mother, Mosele Malakoane, lives in a shack of caked mud, dung and rusty sheets of corrugated tin, its meager roof covered with black plastic weighted down by stones. Inside are a few sticks of wooden furniture, a shred of curtain hanging off a tiny window, a paraffin stove and the double bed she shared with her son. Thabang had two worn toys: a steam shovel and a small gray airplane.
The healer, whom police identified as Emmanuel Moloantoa, moved in next door less than a year ago. A young man, identified as Samuel Khanye, lived adjacent to him.
Ms. Malakoane said her son "was always at my side." But on Aug. 30, she left him outside with a 5-year-old playmate and took a nap. What happened next is murky. Detective Nketle said Mr. Khanye told him that he played with Thabang, then took him to the healer's shack because he could not find Thabang's mother.
Mr. Moloantoa was holding a prayer session for about 10 people, the detective said. Neighbors said they heard drums pounding. After Thabang's body was found, Ms. Malakoane said, one woman told her that she had seen the boy alive in the healer's shack that night.
But Detective Nketle said that woman had refused to talk to him. Mr. Moloantoa denied that the boy was ever in the shack
"He even denies he knows who the child is," the detective said. "Everyone is saying, `I didn't see this, I didn't see that.' It is just so difficult to connect anyone to the crime."
2003-09-30 16:46 | User Profile
What a bunch of filthy ass savages...and to think that our immigration policy allows these animals into our country.
2003-09-30 17:22 | User Profile
Father charged with murder of 3-year-old, mother with abuse
By Laura Counts, STAFF WRITER
OAKLAND -- Chazarus "Charles" Hill Sr. and his wife, Kymberly Dashon Ford Hill, 32, charged in the beating death of 3-year-old Chazarus Hill Jr., appeared briefly in court Wednesday and were assigned defense attorneys.
The pair will return to court today to enter pleas.
Hill, 23, has been charged with murder and two felony counts of child abuse and assault. Ford Hill, 32, has been charged with one count of child abuse or allowing abuse likely to cause great bodily harm or death.
Hill Sr.'s son, nicknamed "Cha Cha," was pronounced dead at San Leandro Hospital early Saturday. His body was bruised from head to toe, police said. An autopsy showed he died from cerebral hematoma, or a blood clot, caused by a beating.
Police said Hill Sr. confessed to severely beating the boy when he gave wrong answers when quizzed on his ABCs and numbers. Ford Hill told police she had witnessed the abuse, which police say occurred during the past few weeks but escalated in the boy's final days.
William Daley, the court-appointed attorney assigned to represent Hill Sr., said he had just received the case and had not had a chance to review it. He said at this point, Hill Sr.'s plea will likely be not guilty.
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Thomas Reardon appointed Deputy Public Defender William Locke to represent Ford Hill.
Cha Cha's mother, Tyrinza Brown, 23, and her mother, Patricia Blair, 41, made a second trip from Southern California for the court appearance Wednesday. They said they were planning to return home to plan the boy's' funeral, but declined to comment further.
Belinda Hill, Hill Sr.'s mother, said she believes Ford Hill is more involved in the toddler's death than has been reported. She has said her son told her Ford Hill delivered the beatings.
"They're not saying it, but she played a big role," said Hill, who traveled from St. Louis. "(My son) told me."
Belinda Hill said both sides of the family are "working together" to make sure justice is done.
Neighbors and family members said they had repeatedly called Alameda County Child Protective Services to report the boy was being abused, but he was never removed from the home. He had been living with his father, stepmother and great-grandmother on Modesto Avenue in East Oakland's Maxwell Park neighborhood.
Hill Sr. married Ford Hill about five months ago. Ford Hill has six children of her own, none of whom were living with her and Hill Sr.
2003-09-30 18:42 | User Profile
[QUOTE]"I don't think these beliefs are limited to a certain class of people or even a certain level of education," he said. To some who believe that the supernatural can determine one's success and that plant- or animal-based mixtures ward off evil, human muti is "just pushing the envelope a little further," he said. [/QUOTE]
Yea, sure dude. Make excuses for the savages. Gosh, they're so avant-garde, pushing their "envelope a little further"!!