Hundreds have been harassed for being `witches’ in the Northern Province so far this year, and the number is growing. David Shapshak reports
SOME looked sheepish, others defiant as 52 youths crowded into the Pietersburg Magistrate’s Court when the biggest-ever crackdown on witchcraft killings in the Northern Province began last Friday.
The accused – all aged between 14 and 26 and including three young women – were charged in connection with the murder of 33 “witches” in 1994. The trial represents the latest effort by the provincial government to combat the wave of murders based on superstition in the region. In the first half of this year 676 witchcraft-related cases were reported in the Northern Province.
Prominent among the 52 accused – who were remanded on bail until later this year – was Solly Makola, community police forum chairman of the town of “Nobody”, near Pietersberg. He is accused of participation in the burning of a “self-confessed” witch, killed when she claimed responsibility for the deaths of several villagers in the area, including three family members who died on the same date of the same month in three subsequent years.
The alleged witch’s husband was also burned to death two days later, after their daughter confessed her father was the “true” witch. The daughter was then herself killed for being a “witch”. Her 17-year-old brother was also killed after he threatened vengeance against the mob.
Makola told the Mail & Guardian during Friday’s hearing that the charges against the accused were unfair, because they had been acting in accordance with cultural beliefs and felt they had done nothing wrong.
He argued that the best way of dealing with the witchcraft phenomenon was to create separate “refugee villages” for suspected witches.
Such a village does already exist, at Helena Trust farm 40km outside Pietersburg.
In what must be one of the most bizarre communities in South Africa, about 200 people, victims of superstition, jealousy or mere rumour, live in what rates in terms of cleanliness and orderliness as a model village.
One of them is Abraham Maharala (75), who had a joyful party one night in September 1994 to celebrate the return of his son from the mines on the Witwatersrand. The two men danced all night to the new hi-fi set Maharala’s son had brought home to their little village just outside Pietersburg.
The next morning joy turned to tragedy when rumours spread that the Maharala family had danced naked. The villagers accused Maharala of practising witchcraft. He was forced to flee for his life with his wife, two daughters and four grandchildren while their house was burnt down. “I am lucky to be alive,” the old man said.
Witch-hunts are usually triggered by natural events – most frequently a lightning strike or an unexplained death.
Jealousy and petty grievances between villagers are often enough to start fatal rumours. So it was with Esther Rasesemola (40) who was driven out of her community, she said, after a brother-in-law began a rumour that she was a witch to avoid paying back R500 he had borrowed from her.
“He started influencing people saying that I had caused a lightning strike,” she recounted. She had to flee to the Helena village with five dependants and, like almost all the other inhabitants, believes her life would be at risk should she return to her old home.
“For now, we aren’t burning anyone,” said a 16-year-old among the accused at Friday’s hearing, who was charged with murdering a suspected witch in 1994 after a lightning strike in his village.
“We haven’t changed our belief; we now know it is against the law to kill them,” said one of his co-accused. The “fear of prosecution” is all that is keeping further murders from occurring, said Captain Sarel Botha, commander of a special task team from the priority crime unit set up to handle the 1994 murder investigations. “The moment there is no policing in the [rural] areas, it’ll start all over again.”