Wonder Hlongwa
Selling human body parts is a lucrative business in South Africa. Prices for eyes, breasts, brains or genitals range from R1 000 to R10 000 – depending on the body part up for sale.
The macabre practice is shrouded in mystery. Most traditional healers are afraid to talk about this thriving bloody commerce.
The discovery three weeks ago of four headless bodies in Delmas, Mpumalanga, has raised questions whether they were victims of body parts merchants. Police could match only two heads with bodies.
Dr Gordon Chavinduka, president of the Zimbabwean Traditional Healers Association and former vice- chancellor of the University of Zimbabwe, explains that these deeds are usually done in the quest for cold cash.
“Witch doctors use it [body parts] to prepare different medicines, depending on what the client wants,” Chavinduka said. “Mostly it is for self-enrichment and business improvement.”
Pam Reynolds, head of the social anthropology department at the University of Cape Town who has done extensive research among African healers, attributes the growth in muti murders to a breakdown of traditional social institutions, including family values. “These practices take place under extreme poverty and distress,” she said.
Muti is a term used to describe magical potions that are supposed to inject users with extraordinary powers. Chavinduka conducted research into the use of human body parts by witch doctors, sitting with them while they prepared their muti.
“If a witch doctor is going to go out at night to practise witchcraft, they eat human flesh, drink the soup and smear their bodies with some medicine,” Chavinduka said. “The connection is that they will be brave, feared and even invisible at night.”
Their reputation for supernatural powers prompts businessmen to consult certain sangomas, who also practice witchcraft, to help with ukuthwala (accumulation of wealth). The sangoma will recommend certain human body parts as ingredients to be used in brewing the muti.
Often businessmen delegate a gang or hire someone to kill a person and bring the relevant human parts.
“A girl’s vagina brings productivity to the business,” Chavinduka said. “The connection is that women are productive because they produce children. Testicles are used for enhancing sexual strength and perfomance.”
Sometimes witch doctors tell husbands to murder their wives in order to concoct special good-luck muti. In the past, this business has tempted mortuary employees to cut up corpses and cash in on the human meat trade.
In 1990, Johannes Mohlale Monareng of Delmas was sentenced to eight years for killing a six-year-old girl and then trying to sell her head. He was committed to a mental institution and released four years ago under medical supervision.
Now police want to question him, hoping he might help solve the mystery behind the headless bodies found near a river at Delmas.
The beheading of the Delmas bodies suggest that the victims may have been killed to provide brain muti to be eaten.
According to one traditional healer, a corpse’s head is chopped off and the top of the skull removed. The brain is removed, dried and ground with herbs to make a potion for ukuncinda (eating with your fingers). The skull is kept to be used as a dish for holding the muti when it is eaten.
“If the business is not doing well, get a boy or a girl’s head – someone who has a future and your business will have a future too,” Chavinduka explained.
William Spogter, a “traditional medical practitioner” and member of the South African Traditional Healers Association, is angry at witch doctors who “destroy the traditional healing practice. They create perceptions that all traditional healers are involved in this horrific practice.”
Spogter has a personal reason for his anger. Last year, one of his friend’s daughters was abducted in Alexandra. Her body was later found on the banks of the Jukskei River. The young girl’s eyes had been gouged out and her vagina cut away.
The South African Traditional Healers Association asserts that until the government adopts regulations for traditional healing, unbridled trade in human parts will flourish.