/ 27 January 1995

The little creature with a big appetite

TOKOLOSHES, these creatures which do the work of witches, are central to the culture of the people who live in the Lowveld. It is widely believed that anyone who owns one of these animal-like beings can acquire great wealth at the expense of others.

The tokoloshe — which looks like a baboon or a short hairy man with a long penis — is also reputed to have an insatiable sexual appetite and in order to satisfy this lust it prowls around at night to rape unsuspecting women.

Last week, for example, two men from the village of Marite near Hazyview were expelled from the area. Local residents claim they had admitted to owning tokoloshes and using them to steal maize from other people’s houses.

People from the district of Ohrigstad say they chased a man from their village after finding evidence that he kept a tokoloshe. The witch then approached a white farmer and suggested that he fire all the black labourers on the estate as he could do their work alone. This the farmer promptly did but his curiosity was aroused. One night he visited the fields and found a large number of small creatures tilling the land with his new employee acting as the supervisor.

Social workers receive frequent complaints in this region from people who say they were raped by a tokoloshe. When a woman wakes at night with wetness between her legs, she will probably believe that she has been sexually accosted by this supernatural being.

A tokoloshe is believed to have an uncanny power called mashoshapansi — to make it go under. It can extend its penis to any length and send it underground into the genitals of a sleeping or unsuspecting woman. The creature can also enter the homes of people through a crack in the door.

Many of my informants tell me that divorce — one of the greatest social problems in the rural areas — is caused by tokoloshes raping wives of migrant labourers. When a woman loses interest in her husband, it is often interpreted as being the result of rape by the tokoloshe.

According to a recent article by Isak Niehaus, an anthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, the tokoloshe is frequently associated with illicit and hedonistic sexual activities and is often blamed for the socially disruptive effects of these.

Lazarus Sentsho is a lecturer at the Mapulaneng Teachers’ Training College and is doing research into witchcraft beliefs in the Eastern Transvaal