FRIDAY, 6.00PM:
SEVEN foreigners were lynched in Dakar, Senegal on Thursday, following hysteria over “penis shrinkers”. Locals believe that foreigners who make brief physical contact with them on the street have the power to shrink their penises.
Bystanders then go after the alleged “sex stealers” and mercilessly beat them. One of the murder victims had been burned to death.
Similar incidents have been reported this year in neighbouring Ivory Coast and Gabon, usually involving members of the Hausa tribe.
Dakar psychologist Serigne Mor Mbaye blames the mob mentality on “fear of castration” among ill-educated African males, coupled with a loss of identity “in the face of an increasingly complex world.”